I took a left onto Ledyard. My car twisted through a ninety-degree curve. The streetlights behind me faded into darkness. A sign for Jarosz Welding on a giant building’s façade appeared to have been stenciled by an intoxicated blacksmith. The road straightened. A custom motorcycle shop, a rivet manufacturer, and a space for lease followed. I couldn’t find a street number on any of them.
I approached a massive quadrangle surrounded by a towering chain link fence with barbed wire. The gate was open. I counted five separate buildings inside the compound. One was a car detail shop. I couldn’t see what the others were. I was about to roll past it when I spotted a row of mailboxes with a series of numbers above them. One of them matched the one Mrs. Chimchak had given me.
The warehouse was one of the buildings in the quadrangle and the gate was open.
I wondered if someone was there right now.
Butterflies swirled in my stomach. I drove through another bend and pulled into the parking lot for Lindo’s Bodywork. I parked behind a row of bigger cars waiting for repair to keep my vehicle out of street view.
I retraced my path along Ledyard Street, hugging the chain link fences. When I got to within one lot of the gate to the quadrangle, I looked around. It was too risky to get any closer. I needed elevation to improve my line of sight.
Rectangular buildings with smooth walls surrounded me. Not a foothold to be found. I glanced across the street. A metal shack housed Pawliczko’s Salvage. A rusty camper stood tall among a parking lot of decaying vans and cars. I darted across the street to the RV, a GMC Eleganza, with peeling white paint and sea foam trim. An uninspiring metal ladder offered me a boost to its roof.
I scampered up the rungs each step faster than the previous. The ladder creaked, groaned, and swayed. When I got to the top I saw human figures across the street. I dropped to my stomach on the roof of the camper. My hands felt as though they’d fallen onto a sheet of used sandpaper. Rust, dirt, and grime surrounded me. Empty cans of Tecate beer formed a pyramid to my right. There had to be fifty of them, or more. A pair of metal beach chairs lay folded beside it. Apparently, the proprietors were salvaging cars at the expense of their livers.
I focused my attention across the street. A door to a prefabricated metal warehouse was propped open by a giant cinderblock. A faint light inside the warehouse illuminated a white, unmarked delivery truck with its back to the loading dock. Donnie Angel’s van was parked beside it. I recognized it by the modified twin tailpipes and the memories they inspired. A German shepherd sat in front of the vehicles, tongue hanging out.
I waited for more than fifteen minutes. Then a man came out of the warehouse and opened the door to the delivery truck. Two other men wheeled a crate out of the warehouse to the edge of the loading dock. Donnie Angel emerged from the warehouse on crutches. One of the men climbed into the truck and helped the other maneuver the crate inside.
Another figure emerged from the warehouse. A dark beret and turned-up coat collar obscured the man’s head, while a bulky winter coat did the same to his physique. It was hard to measure height precisely from my distance and angle. Donnie Angel was six feet tall. That much I knew all too well. The strongest conclusion I could draw was that the man with the turned-up collar was about the same height, perhaps a bit taller. He was remarkable only in the way he moved. More like a mountain lion than a human being, bounding on his haunches with a profound confidence bordering on arrogance.
The two men who’d loaded the cargo climbed into the delivery truck. The third assistant helped Donnie Angel into the back of the van. The German shepherd followed. The assistant closed the door behind them, circled around to the driver’s side and got behind the wheel. The man with the turned-up collar got into his own car, an older American sedan. One by one, they started their engines.
I hurried down the stairs. I watched the vehicles turn toward the gate. As the headlights of the delivery truck swung in an arc toward me, I hid behind the RV. I waited for the second and the third pair of lights to shine, and when I heard the sound of the engines grow faint, I knew they’d driven off in the direction from which I’d arrived.
I ran to my car, started the engine, and raced to the highway entrances on Airport Road. I came up on them so quickly I had to break to make sure I didn’t overtake them. The sedan was in the lead, the delivery truck in the middle, and Donnie Angel’s van brought up the rear. It was the van and its gaudy aftermarket tailpipes that I recognized, yet again. They took the ramp onto I-84 East and drove the speed limit in the far right lane.
I followed the three vehicles into Avon, the tony suburb on Talcott Mountain west of Hartford. It took us an additional twenty minutes to get to their final destination. Two lefts off Route 44 at the top of the mountain left us in a heavily wooded area and off the beaten track. A gate made of cherry wood opened, and they pulled into a massive stone castle.
I continued onward so as not to arouse suspicion, and parked three hundred yards away from the house. Gently pressing my doors shut, I high-stepped it over a guardrail along the curb and descended into the forest that abutted the property. Then I squatted down to my haunches and checked my watch. I needed to wait for rhodopsin to be released in my retina and improve my night vision. Another lesson learned long ago from Mrs. Chimchak during one of the excruciating summer PLAST camps I’d all but purged from my mind.
Five minutes later I began to advance toward the main house through the vineyard. I cupped my hand over my nostrils so the steam fanned out. I hugged the tree line so that the mulch surrounding the trees muffled the sound of my footsteps. A cottage stood on the left, where I guessed they made the wine. A tennis court appeared on the right. I was halfway to the main house when a cat darted across my path, hissing and yowling at me for trespassing. Not a good sign, I thought. Even the cats were on guard for prowlers.
A spotlight burst to life. It shone from my right beside the tennis court. I stayed low and sprinted left across two rows of vines. The spotlight followed in my wake but didn’t shine directly on me. I pressed my back against the far wall of the cottage facing the access road.
A man approached. His footsteps grew louder. He was walking along the far wall. The pace was determined but not urgent. Diligent, but not panicked. This suggested he hadn’t seen me. Perhaps the buyer or Donnie Angel had sent one of his men to walk around the entire property to make sure they were alone. It would have been a worthwhile security measure.
I looked around for a weapon of some kind in case I needed one. I found a rock the size of a baseball. I didn’t see any other option so I grabbed it. It felt ridiculous in my hand. I couldn’t imagine using it to hit a human being. I returned to my spot against the wall of the cottage. The man continued along a path between two columns of trees. He scanned the horizon to each side as he walked like a patrolman. When he got close enough for me to see his face, knots formed in my stomach.
He was one of Donnie Angel’s men. He was one of the men who’d grabbed me, thrown me into the van, and kidnapped me a block away from my apartment.
I pulled my head back, kept my back against the wall. I didn’t move or make a sound. I counted to twenty slowly, each second consistent with one step. My guess was it would take him ten to fifteen steps to walk past the cottage. The five additional steps were insurance. Once I counted to twenty, he would be safely past me and I could take a peek at him from behind.