Page 139 of The Slayer
“Do I know? I don’t know.” Tino shrugged and then tilted the rearview mirror.
They drove around the block, and when they passed the house again, the garage door was open and Chuito was waving them in.
“Merda,” Tino whispered but turned into the driveway anyway. “He is not thinking about crashing here. That cannot be his plan.” Chuito manually closed the garage behind them when they pulled in, and Tino turned off the car and opened the car door. “No.”
“It’s a foreclosure house, and the place next door is practically falling apart. Most of the places around here are abandoned,” Chuito said as he held up his hand. “We’ll be able to see the warehouse from upstairs. This is perfect. It’s like winning the lottery. No one will know we’re here, and we’ll be able to get a better grasp of the situation.”
“I’m not going down in Miami for squatting in a foreclosure house,” Tino argued. “That is not gonna be what takes me down.”
“Give me a better option.” Chuito folded his arms and shrugged. “Find me a Ritz-Carlton in the hood to watch the warehouse.”
Tino stood there, obviously furious. “I don’t know who lived in this place. They could’ve had—” He held up his hand. “Anything.”
“You’re spoiled,” Chuito said dismissively as he turned and walked into the house.
Tino turned to Alaine. “Do you wanna stay here?”
Alaine glanced around the garage that had an abandoned bookshelf in the corner and rugs rolled up by the door. She stepped inside the house, finding a washing machine and dryer that were probably older than her.
Then the lights to the car turned off automatically, plunging them into darkness.
“There’s no electricity here, is there?” she asked as she turned back to Tino, though she couldn’t see him.
“No.” He pulled out her phone and used it to light their way. “This is really great. Highlight of my night. There are rats here. I can hear them. I have a sixth sense for rats.”
“There’s no fucking rats,” Chuito called out. “Stop being a pussy.”
“I don’t like that term,” Alaine complained and then screamed when her foot hit something soft and furry. “Oh my God! Oh my God!”
She jumped on Tino, who nearly fell over as he tried to hold on to her and shine the phone down at the floor. “What is it?”
“It’s a rat!” She pointed to the floor as she hung off Tino, trying to keep her feet from touching the floor. “I felt it! It was a big, huge rat! I don’t want to stay here, Chu! I can’t handle rats! I don’t want to be in hell if there are rats! I changed my mind!”
Chuito flashed his phone at them, his face illuminated in the darkness, and he didn’t look amused. Then he pointed his phone to the floor, lighting up a stuffed animal sitting on the floor in the kitchen.
“Oh.” Alaine crawled off Tino and looked at Chuito hesitantly. “I’m still not a big fan of staying here. There are no lights. No water. What if we have to pee?”
“She has a valid point,” Tino agreed quickly. “We’ll get a hotel room and come back tomorrow.”
“In the daytime, where everyone can see your GL from a mile away?” Chuito supplied in a dull, annoyed voice. “You’re supposed to be good at this. It’s your job, motherfucker. You know that hiding out and watching the warehouse from here is a better idea than driving by and trying to scope it out. We can see it from upstairs.”
Alaine looked at Tino hopefully, because he’d had a lot of good ideas thus far and seemed to be a fairly efficient enforcer, not that she would consider herself an expert on the subject.
“If there are rats—” Tino started.
“There’s no rats.” Chuito flashed his phone around the kitchen. “Do you see any rats?”
“They hide.” Tino shone Alaine’s phone into the corner of the kitchen where a refrigerator had once been, and it was now a dirty, empty space. “And they come out when you least expect it.”
“Is this an issue we need to discuss?” Chuito asked with a laugh. “Why are you so freaked out about rats? Doesn’t New York have more rats than anywhere?”
Tino flashed the phone at Chuito and said, “Why do you think I hate them?”
“Okay.” Chuito shrugged. “I don’t know how to help you with that.”
“Man, the building I grew up in when I was a kid. We had rats. It was always a friggin’ issue. It was like a war against the rats. Romeo and Nova were constantly fighting them. Sometimes, at night, you could hear the traps snap—”
Alaine jumped when he said it, giving Tino a look of horror. “Did you have to throw them away after? Like dead little rat bodies that you had to dispose of? Did they die a quick death?”
