Books by Philip Hoy

It's What Timo Woulda Done

The inside of the warehouse seems dimmer now with less sunlight coming through the ceiling vents than before. Maybe a passing cloud. Maybe the day wearing down. Ruth and Joanne are still visible just ahead of you, maneuvering over the last of the shattered plywood from the fallen crates. You want very badly to be out of here before it gets any darker, but resist the urge to hurry them along, steadying yourself as the board you are on creaks loudly, shifts beneath your weight, and settles against the floor with an echoing snap.   

“Timo?” 

You freeze, just as Ruth and Joanne spin about, wide-eyed, to face you. 

“You in here, man?” The voice is close, coming from the other side of the wall of crates. “It’s us, Sal and Rigo.” 

Ruth flashes you a questioning look. You shrug, hold your finger to your lips.  

“We were heading out to your place and saw your truck.” A second voice now. “You run out of gas or something?” They are moving into the warehouse, heading your way.  

The girls are suddenly next to you. “What do we do?” hisses Joanne. 

“Hide,” you whisper. “Wait till they leave.” 

“This way,” says Ruth, retracing her steps. You and Joanne follow, moving soundlessly past Timo’s body and weaving your way among several large, plastic-wrapped objects until you find yourselves huddled between the last pallet of stacked cardboard and the corrugated metal of the back wall. You realize it is the hiding place where you first spotted the girls, and that the three of you are now very much cornered. 

You crawl to the far side of the stack and peek around the corner, but there is no clear view of Timo’s body or even the crates you demolished. Moving into a low crouch, you slowly lift your head to peer over the top of the pallet. On each side of you, Ruth and Joanne do the same.

“Maybe they left,” whispers Joanne.

“No,” breathes Ruth in your other ear. “I hear them.”

Yes, so do you, the creak and scrape of the wood as they make their way over the shattered crates. Your eyes strain into the darkness.

“Hey, Sal.” The shoulders of a bright red, almost pink, polo shirt with the collar turned up materialize out of the shadows ahead of you. “Over here.”

A second shirt, this one light blue, appears behind the first. “Timo, that you, man?” asks Sal. “You alright?”

As their faces come into view, you recognize the short, curly hair and square, blunt features of the brothers who jumped Slick in the locker-room this morning. If Sal was the lookout, then the one in the red shirt must be Rigo. He did all the pounding.

Rigo reaches the body first. “Oh shit. Oh God,” he says, dropping out of view. “Oh my God, fucking Timo. It’s fucking Timo!” 

“This is bad.” Sal is shaking his head. “This is really bad.” 

“No shit,” shouts Rigo, reappearing. “He’s fucking dead!” He disappears from view again, lowers his voice. “How many times did they have to…”

“We gotta get out of here,” declares his brother. 

Rigo reappears. “We can’t just leave him.” 

“Leave him? We’ll be dead too if we get caught here.” 

“By who?” 

“Who do you fucking think?” asks Sal, reaching out to jab his brother’s forehead with the tips of his fingers. “You think Timo was working for himself?”  

Rigo ignores the prod, continues to stare down thoughtfully. “You think it was Jesse?”

“That pussy? Bet he’s got something to do with it though.” 

Neither speaks for a long moment before Rigo finally shakes his head. “Fucking Timo, man, I can’t believe it.”

His brother’s hand appears on his shoulder. “Me neither, man, but we gotta go.”

“What about the truck?” 

Sal raises his head and narrows his eyes as if gazing in the direction of the battered white Chevy. “Yeah, you’re right. We shouldn’t just leave it there.” He turns to his brother. “See if the keys are—” 

“No way,” says Rigo, stepping back and raising his hands.

Sal glares at him, then shakes his head as he bends forward, disappearing from view. “Shit,” you hear him say. “Fucking shit.”

Slowly, you turn to face Ruth. There is a spot of blood just above her lip and two more on her cheek, like moles that weren’t there before. If she feels your gaze on her, she doesn’t respond, her dark eyes intent on the distance. As you stare at them, entranced, their black centers seem to spark and flicker with the warm glow of faraway embers.

“Rigo!” The alarm in Sal’s voice snaps you to attention. “What the fuck are you doing?”

The glow in Ruth’s eyes is now flooding the entire warehouse with light.

“Burning this shit down,” says Rigo, a Bic lighter in one hand and a flaming scrap of plywood in the other. “It’s what Timo woulda done.” He turns and tosses the board onto the remains of the nearest fallen crate. The light in the warehouse momentarily dims as the torch sputters, blinks out, and then suddenly reignites as the dry, brittle wood around it bursts into flame.

“Fuck man,” shouts Sal. “We’re still in here!”

“Well, I didn’t know it would … shit, look at that!” The entire crate is on fire, the flames leaping upward, as high as the wall of boxes behind it.

“Let’s go!” Sal grabs his brother by the front of his shirt and pulls him past the flames and into the depths of the warehouse.

Thick clouds of smoke billow upward, blackening the ceiling as the fire spreads in all directions.

“Oh my God,” you hear Joanne say.

You stumble backwards into the corrugated wall and feel it vibrate roughly against your shoulder blades. Ruth is saying something, but the crackle and roar of the flames is all you can hear, and despite the scorching heat on your face, you can’t seem to tear your eyes away from the tornado of flames gathering before you. There is no way out. You are trapped.  

Hands pull at your wrists, your knees give, and you collapse to the sand covered floor to sit between the girls with your backs against the pallet.

“Air!” shouts Ruth. “The air is down here!”

Yes, you tell yourself, there’s air, but not for long. You stare at the riveted seam in the overlapping panels of the rusted metal wall in front of you and at the pyramid shaped mound of sand collected at its base, and think that a bullet to the head would have been a better death than this … sand?

Sand from outside?

You brace your back against the weight of the pallet and kick out with both legs, slamming the heels of your feet against the corrugated metal with all your might. Pain jolts through your ankles, but you feel it, the slightest give.

You kick again, and again, aiming at the overlap in the panels. A hair’s width of outside light appears between them and along their base, then a crack, then an entire inch, and each time you kick there is more and more give, more and more outside light.

Joanne sees what you are trying to do and begins kicking as well, but when you turn to Ruth, she isn’t there.

“Keep going!” shouts Joanne. “It’s working!”

You look up to find a ceiling of smoke pressing down upon you and begin to lose hope.

Ruth appears, coughing, with a long metal rod in her hands, some sort of tool or maybe part of one of the packing machines. She wedges one end between the widening gap in the panels, closest to the floor, and begins to pry it back and forth, bending the metal outward. You and Joanne return to kicking and soon there is a triangular space large enough to crawl through.

Joanne goes first, sliding through the opening on her belly, next Ruth, and finally you.

Outside, Joanne is already up and helping Ruth to stand. You roll onto your back and stare at the purpling sky, chest rising and falling as you gasp for breath. The hiss and crackle of the burning warehouse roars in your ears.

“Do you think they made it out?” asks Joanne.

“Maybe,” wheezes Ruth.

A succession of shotgun-like explosions from within the warehouse, followed by a slow, anguished groan of metal, is all it takes to get you on your feet again.

“Just in case,” you say, moving toward the rear of the first building. “We should stay out of sight.”

Weaving your way among the weeds and dry brush crowding the narrow space between the warehouse and the back fence, you lead the girls to the end of the alley and peer around the corner of the building just in time to see Sal and Rigo squeeze between the gates and climb into the red Corvette parked behind Timo’s truck. The three of you watch from the shadows as the engine rumbles alive and the car pulls onto the street. Then, tires squealing, the brothers disappear, the throaty growl of the car’s engine fading with them into the distance.

The silence is replaced by the rumble of the warehouse, roiling like thunderclouds behind you. “Let’s go,” you say, reaching into the front pocket of your jeans.

Joanne climbs into the truck first and by the time you slide into the driver’s seat she’s already retrieved her cream-colored purse from the open glovebox. You turn the key and pump the gas pedal, coaxing the grumbling engine to life. Ahead of you through the windshield a towering pillar of black smoke billows upwards into the sky.

“Do you know where you’re going?” asks Ruth, her door thudding shut.

You shift the gear above the steering column into reverse and back out onto the street.

“Straight,” you say, squinting into the setting sun. “We’ll hit the highway sooner or later.”

Joanne is clutching her purse to her stomach. You wonder for the first time about Ruth’s things. Was she carrying a purse when she found you sitting alone this morning, or did she leave it, like you did your backpack, behind in her locker at school?

School.

A world away now, in someone else’s life.

By the time you make it back to town, the sun has set.

“You should probably turn your lights on,” suggests Ruth, the first words any of you have spoken since leaving the warehouse.

There are only two knobs on the dash. The first causes the windshield wipers to scrape into motion. You shove it in again and pull the second one, lighting the dash and illuminating the blur of oncoming asphalt.

The signal ahead turns from green to yellow and you ease up on the gas. There are three traffic lights on the highway as it passes through town, this one as you enter, another as you leave, and one in the middle. That’s where you need to turn, you remind yourself, at the second light. Then it’s only one more block to city hall and the police station.

You pull up to the crosswalk as a semi grinds to a stop behind you, flooding the cab of the Chevy with light. Across the intersection on the opposite side of the street, the Friday night crowd is already gathering outside the gas station-convenience store. Friends meeting up, strangers looking for rides, teenagers trying to buy beer, and people showing off their cars. Like the red Corvette filling up at the gas pump and the two lowriders, one metallic blue and the other gold, parked like show cars beneath the Circle-K marquee.

“Shit,” you say, “It’s them.”

“Who?” asks Ruth.

You point. “Them.”

Sal is holding the gas nozzle pushed into the center back of the Corvette with his head turned toward the scrolling digits on the face of the pump. Rigo is just exiting the store, his hot pink polo bobbing across the parking lot.

“What if they see us?” asks Ruth.

“So, what?” says Joanne. “They don’t know us.”

“What if they recognize the truck?”

The light turns green. You stomp on the gas pedal and the engine shuts off.

“Fuck.” You twist the key in the ignition. “Fuck!” The transmission hesitates, then stutters weakly, but won’t turn over.

“The battery,” says Ruth. “Turn off the—”

The semi behind you blasts its horn, cutting her off, but you understand. You punch in the headlight knob and try again. The driver honks a second time, and just as the engine starts and the truck lurches forward into the intersection, you turn to find Sal and Rigo staring back at you.

“Shit,” says Ruth. “They saw us.”

“Yeah,” says Joanne, twisting in her seat to look through the back window. “Them and everyone else.”

“Turn,” says Ruth.

The second signal light is just ahead. “But we’re almost there.”

“Just do it, before they catch up.”

You make a sharp left across the double yellow and are swallowed by the shadows of the nearest treelined neighborhood.

“No,” says Ruth as you reach for the lights. “Better off.”

Squinting into the darkness, you keep to the center of the narrow street to avoid the parked cars lining both sides. Illuminated front windows, intermittent porch lights, and the single street lamp at the end of the block are enough to guide you as your eyes adjust. The homes on the left give way to your old elementary school, dark now, except for a single light still burning in the front office.

“Look, see?” Ruth leans forward points to the right. “Turn here, then go around the back of the park. Get it from the other side.”

No use telling her you know exactly where you are now, that you used to throw the newspaper in this neighborhood, that your house is only three streets away.

“Wait,” says Joanne, as you make the final corner. The shuttered swimming pool is just ahead on the right, and behind it is the brick wall topped with barbed wire that surrounds the back of the police station. “Stop the car.”

“But—”

“Please, Matthew.” Her voice is steady, confident, not the girl sitting next to you earlier today shaking with fear. “Just do it.”

You slow the truck, ease it to a stop against the curb, and shift into park.

“What is it?” asks Ruth.

“Are we sure this is the right thing to do?” Joanne asks.

She’s facing forward, gripping the purse in her lap with both hands, her feathered bangs hang limply over her face.

“What other choice do we have?” you ask.

Ruth is staring at her, biting her lip. “I don’t understand.”

“Listen to me,” she says, turning to you and then back to Ruth. “What good will it do?”

“What good?” The anger is naked in Ruth’s voice. “What about Tony? What about Bobby? He killed them, Joanne, and he was about to do the same thing to us.”

“Yes,” Joanne says, raising her voice over Ruth’s. “And I killed him.”

Ruth opens her mouth, closes it, then reaches over to put her hand on Joanne’s wrist. “You weren’t alone.”

“He deserved it,” says Joanne. “And now he’s gone, completely gone. That place will burn to the ground and no one will ever know he was in there … that we were ever in there.”

“What are you saying, Joanne, that we never tell?”

“What good will it do besides get us killed?”

Ruth is shaking her head. “I want this to be over, Joanne. I want to go home. I want to go to sleep, wake up, and discover this is all a bad dream … but it’s not.” She pulls her hand away from Joanne’s, wipes roughly at her cheek with it, crosses her arms. “It’s not, and we can’t just stay quiet about it.”

Joanne turns to her. “You heard them, Ruth. We walked into something, a bad drug deal, a gang war, an execution. Who the fuck knows. Timo was working for someone bigger, someone worse.”

“But…” Ruth seems to be taking this in, her brow twisting in confusion.

“Sure, we left school together,” continues Joanne. “And we drove around a little, but then we got dropped off at your house. Your parents aren’t home anyway, right? Who’s to say that’s not what happened?”

“What about Sal and Rigo?” asks Ruth. “They just saw us.”

“Those assholes don’t know what they saw.”

“What about Tony’s parents? Bobby’s?” Ruth presses both palms to her forehead. “My God, Joanne, what about justice?”

“There is no justice, Ruth. There’s living and there’s dying. I don’t know about you, but I want to live.”

Ruth returns to biting her lip, for a moment her gaze drifts out of focus, and then, suddenly, she’s looking right at you. “Mathew? You’re not saying anything.”

Joanne turns to you as well. It’s true, you’ve been following their exchange as if this was all happening to someone else. Since leaving the warehouse you’ve been going over the story in your head, everything you can remember, every detail. That is what you were going to tell the police. It never occurred to you to do the opposite, to stay quiet, to lie if necessary.

“Matthew?”

How easy would it be to distance yourself from all of this? The five of you left school this morning, but only the three of you return? Did anyone actually see you leave though? And who would ever believe you ditched school with a couple of senior jocks and their girlfriends in the first place?

“C’mon, Lil’ Boot, say something.”

“I…” And where is this assassin now? Where is the murder weapon? “I think, maybe, Joanne has a—”

The knock on your window, three loud taps, causes you to jump in your seat.

“Hands where I can see them,” a voice says, and you turn to find a bright light in your eyes. “Now!”

You immediately move your hands to the top of the steering wheel.

“You too, ladies. On the dash where I can see them.”

 
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​THE MISADVENTURES OF MATTHEW VAN DER BOOT is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental … no matter how many times you ask.​