It stank. The whole place freaking stank.
It was hardly surprising really, the used needles & various bottles of booze gave the indication that this place had long been used as an ideal place to score crank.
I picked my way gingerly through the garbage until I reached the rotten wood door of the old gravel loader, immediately noticing the severe structural damage to the exterior wall of the main warehouse.
Steve was not going to be impressed. Although, given the prime location of the building in an up and coming part of Lodi my bastard of a boss would probably be excited by the challenge renovating it presented.
Challenge was fucking right.
Even after nearly ten years of renovating and re-selling old buildings I still couldn't see how Steve meant to turn this shit heap into $250,000 apartments, maybe if the warehouse was in LA but Lodi?
The place had a certain air of charm but Hollywood it was not. It was a bloody ghost town that's what it was. I groaned inwardly at the thought of having to move near here for a year or more if Steve decided to go ahead with his plans for renovation. Of course, he would go back to LA and leave me in some redneck town. Eighteen months of tele-conferencing. I groaned again.
Having been unsuccessful in writing off the place at first glance I heaved open the rotten wooden doors to look around inside.
More freaking bottles and crank needles greeted me as I stepped into a shaft of light coming through a broken window just to the right of the front doors.
"How Steve can believe this place could ever be called 'homely' is beyond me" I muttered, crunching broken glass under my Docs as I made my way towards a less than stable looking metal ladder set against the far wall.
I thanked the powers that be for Steve's one good attribute – he allowed me to wear casual clothes such as jeans and boots when assessing potential 'fixer-uppers'. Mandy, the sweet but slightly naive twenty year old that was interring at the firm hadn't been on enough scouting jobs to start swapping office wear for the borderline combat gear that was necessary.
The metal ladder led to a small landing that, judging from the scattered pieces of old chairs and a rusty filing cabinet must have been an office of some sort.
I had just started trying to jimmy open the stubborn bitch of a filing cabinet to see if there were any records or papers left inside when my image of this area of Lodi as a veritable ghost town was rudely disrupted by the rumble of engines.
I peeked out of the half-broken window in time to see four men dressed in dark clothing drag a fifth in front of a dumpster just behind the warehouse.
"Shit!"
I cursed under my breath for parking a few blocks away. It hit me that today might not have been a good day to be without a motorised means of escape.
Two of the ninja men pulled out guns. Okay, today definitely was not a good idea to leave my car beyond running distance. Even if it was older than me and a piece of junk, these guys did not look like the types to let witnesses get off without a warning.
I had to stop myself from screaming as one of the men shot the guy on the ground through the jaw. My eyes widened as I noticed the man that was now screaming in agony was wearing what appeared to be a leather motorcycle vest.
'Oh my God! Fucking bikies?'
My heart was thudding audibly against my ribcage. Even though most of the men were yelling at each other I was utterly convinced that they could hear my heart hammering away.
'What if there are more of them?' I thought to myself.
A sick feeling rose up in my gut. Deciding that hiding under a table was the best option – running for help be damned – I ducked under the window ledge.
As I was crawling like the baby I was a single shot rang out. It froze me in my tracks and I couldn't resist peeking back over the sill.
Big mistake.
A bearded man in a beanie was carving something into the previously screaming in agony, now obviously dead, man's stomach.
I tried to minimise my retching as my stomach attempted to bring up this morning's coffee and apple breakfast combo.
Waiting out whatever the hell was going on not 50 yards away seemed like the best, and only, option. I huddled up against a wall, pulled out my zip lighter and began to flick it on and off. Even though I rarely smoked anymore I had still kept up playing with my lighter as a nervous habit.
It was nightfall before I got up the nerve to leave. I felt like a fucking coward but hey, I wasn't quite used to seeing someone killed and practically gutted like an animal in front of me.
The whole way home, I could not shake the image of that man calmly carving up that bikie's stomach. I mean they acted as if it was no big deal for Christ's sake! What kind of psychopath kills someone without a fucking good reason?
The water had run cold by the time I managed to drag myself out of the shower the next morning. I'd been tossing and turning all night playing out different scenarios in my head. In the most popular one, the person with the beanie burst into my bedroom and shot me directly through the temple. I had given up trying to sleep at around three – after a car backfired and nearly scared the shit out of me.
Steve yelled at me the next morning for being late. The excuse I made up about having three flat tires in the space of two hours may have been a bit weak even for a relatively easy going boss like Steve.
Once he finished his tirade and his face had returned back to its normal colour he told me, or rather barked at me, to go back to the warehouse and get the measurements he wanted.
As Mandy refused to swap sites with me, having landed the job of surveying an old cottage a few miles away, I found myself heading back out to the warehouse.
Two hours in the baking sun, and a change from jeans to denim shorts later, I was once again disturbed to hear the sound of an engine pulling up near the warehouse.
A momentary bolt of panic shot through me and I nearly dropped the tape measure I was holding. The sound of gravel crunching under what I imagined to be motorcycle boots prompted me to succeed in dropping the tape measure. My mind was screaming obscenities at my frozen muscles to move but for some reason my body decided to go with 'freeze' rather 'flight'.
The owner of the boots stepped around the corner and I was glad my body hadn't decided to go with 'fight' because the guy was freaking huge. Granted most people were taller than me, but this guy held himself with a sense of surety that made the difference between our heights greater than what it probably was.
By this stage, my examination of the owner of the boots had gotten as far as his leather jacket, or more specifically the cut covering it. I returned to my coward setting and squeezed my eyes shut in a show of 'I can't see you so you can't see me' behaviour usually seen in those under the age of five.
"What the hell are you doing here?"
His voice was not angry, upset or cautious but rather a mixture of the three.
"Why do you have your eyes closed?"
The anger in his tone went up a notch.
I risked a peek.
"Um, I work for an architectural firm and we're interested in buying this place."
My voice came out in a series of small noises that sounded more like gibberish rather than proper words. The guy appraised me for a moment for saying simply:
"It's not for sale".
At this I began to feel my temper rise.
"Hey asshole! Why would I be taking measurements from the whole fucking building in the stinking heat if it wasn't for sale?"
At the slight look of shock on his face from my sudden outburst I felt my confidence boost further.
"Furthermore, just who the hell do you think you are sneaking up on someone? This isn't public property!"
He remained silent a moment longer before responding to my tirade.
"Look I was just, I was...Why do I have to give you a reason for being here? As you said, your company or whatever is looking into buying the place. You don't own it yet."
Something else seemed to occur to him because he continued speaking before I could get a word in.
"Speaking of trespassing, have you been here before? Recently?" His tone had a hint of a threat in it and his eyes glanced down to my lighter, which I had subconsciously started to flick against my thigh.
My eyes widened slightly as I tried to think of something to say. Nothing was coming whereas a minute earlier I had been suffering from verbal diarrhoea. The lack of response seemed to confirm bigfoot's suspicions and he took a step towards me.
I felt myself face heat up at his proximity and the pressure of thinking up a response. Eventually I stammered out,
"I, I, I m-may have um, have, have to go. I have to go".
'Flight' instinct kicking in I turned tail and fled, but not before it occurred to me that the person interrogating me had a beard, and had been wearing a beanie.
'Fuck!' I thought. I'd actually seen fit to yell at someone I'd seen kill a guy not 24 hours earlier!
This realisation spurred me on, and I could hear the sound of boots hitting gravel hard as the guy I now knew to be a complete psychopath ran after me. Skidding to halt at a gap between the main warehouse and a smaller one, I glanced to my right to see killer-dude rounding the opposite corner. Wheezing slightly and cursing myself for being less than fit I sprinted down the gap between the two walls and thanked god that I'd parked my car just out the front this time.
A black motorcycle was right next to the driver's side door, and as I approached my car I stopped at the bike and repeatedly kicked the stand trying to get if off the ground. When it wouldn't budge under the force of my pitiful kicks I swore loudly, wrenched open the door of my car and practically jumped into the driver's seat. I threw the car into drive and turned the wheel slightly to knock the black motorcycle over. It hit the gravel hard, raising a cloud of greyish dust.
Satisfied that I had given myself a reasonable head start I peeled out of there like I was in a gangster movie, and ran three red lights in my haste to make it back to the hotel.
'Fuck this shit' I thought to myself as I frantically shoved clothing into my overly large suitcase.
'I'm telling Steve that I'll rent a place rather than stay in this town'. I tried to recall the name of the town that the old cottage Mandy was surveying today was in. It been something sweet and inviting that sounded considerably safer than this hole of a hotel.
Charming. That was it.
I scribbled a note to Steve explaining where I'd gone and slipped it under his door. If the place Mandy was supposed to be looking at was nice it was unlikely that she would be in charge of renovating it anyway. I was sure Steve would let me stay in it while I was overseeing the restorations, and I would still be within a short drive of Lodi.
'Yes, I will call the estate agent who's dealing with the firm' I assured myself.
Charming was going to be a much safer place to live for the next 18 months than Lodi.
