Warehouse One

Original Short Fiction

Someday, I will finish a book of short stories all set in my hometown - San Pedro, California. However, as I am a destractable and undisciplined writer, coupled with a lack of ambition, someday may never come. So until then, you’ll get these as they come, in short fragments of imagination, colored by the Noir of LA’s past and one often revisited. San Pedro is home to the Port of Los Angeles as the backdrop to countless movies and stories. When it gets mentioned by name, it’s generally in passing, somewhere you go on the way to someplace else. Like when Jake Gittes sends Escobar on a wild goose chase in the movie Chinatown and says, "Tell us about it on the way to San Pedro.” I've borrowed liberally here, I’m sure. I’m trying to channel Chandler, Hammett, and all the storytellers who made Los Angeles’ shadows as glamorous as her light. I hope you don’t mind. With its docks shrouded in morning fog and streets that dead-end at the ocean, San Pedro has always been a city apart—part of LA, yet never fully of it. It’s the last stop before the Pacific, where people go to work, ships go to rust, with stories waiting to be told. My friend, a longshoreman, used to tell me about eating Italian sandwiches from the A-1 Deli with his father, a fisherman, parked in front of Warehouse One. I don’t know what else goes on there, so I made this up for you.

The fog coated the LA harbor like wet cement as the sun began to fall. The warning horn blew steady off the breakwater, bellowing over Cabrillo Beach, up Stephen White Drive, and fading into the hills. The familiar gray was another reason San Pedro stood apart from Los Angeles proper. A skinny strip of land connected the port town to the City, an act of gerrymandering used to commandeer the port at the turn of the 20th Century when Los Angeles annexed San Pedro and its port along with the marshlands of Wilmington next door. Pedro's fog was real, not the Hollywood kind that vanishes by 10 AM, but a dense, bone-deep soup that sped up the decay most Angelenos seemed immune to.

Decay in the port wasn't just patina—it was everywhere. The water, the sun, and the salt in the air conspired to bring a slow rot that ate everything, from the rusting cargo ships to the faces of the men who worked them. It pitted the weathered concrete of Warehouse One’s six stories. For nearly a century, Warehouse One held countless stories. As the city's first bonded warehouse, it played a key role in making LA an international port, allowing goods to pass through without tax.

Manny Ramirez had worked port security for fifteen years, ever since his cousin Hector got him the job after things didn't work out with his stint unloading ships as a casual laborer with ILWU Local 13. So he spent fifteen years walking the same routes between 22nd Street and the Main Channel, checking the same locks, nodding to the same faces at the Pacific Diner when his shift ended. Fifteen years of watching the port change as he did—grayer, slower, heavier around the middle, the sandwiches he picked up from the A-1 Deli had outpaced his metabolism.

The night shift suited him. Less brass around, less paperwork, just him and the hum of the harbor – container ships groaning against their lines, the distant clank of the new machinery at TraPac, and that foghorn kept cutting through the darkness like a breaching whale. On clear nights, he could see the Vincent Thomas Bridge lit up, a constellation of man-made stars suspended over the darkness of the main channel.

“You're not supposed to be here, ese," Manny said. The shadow against the chain-link fence stepped forward, near Warehouse One's service entrance—not far from the old Catalina Terminal.

Luka Novak had the kind of face that had once been handsome. His windbreaker hung loose on his frame.

"Just having a smoke, officer." Luka's voice was gravel-wrapped in velvet, his accent thickened by years in America but never quite gone. "Waiting on my ride back to the Hill."

Manny knew BS when he smelled it. And this guy reeked of it.

"Maybe wait somewhere else, Novak."

Luka smiled, reaching slowly into his pocket. "Sure thing, amigo."

That was the last thing Manny Ramirez remembered before waking up with a headache and the taste of blood in his mouth. He was inside Warehouse One, zip-tied to a chair, watching three men in black tactical gear drilling into a reinforced storage container.

"Our security friend is awake," said Luka, now wearing the same tactical gear as the others. He crouched in front of Manny, his breath smelling of cigarettes and Turkish coffee. "Sorry about your head. Professional necessity."

"You're making a mistake, cabrón," Manny said, testing the zip ties. They bit into his wrists.

"That's what I told my ex when she left me," Luka laughed. You already know who I am. That's the Italian—" he nodded toward a stocky man, Moretti, with a Roman nose—and that's the Mexican," looking at the lean, dark-skinned Sanchez. "We're just passing through."

"With what? The Rothko paintings? The Macallan whiskey?"

Luka's eyebrows raised slightly. "You know your inventory. Impressive. But no, we're after something with more liquidity."

The drill bit finally broke through the container's lock with a metallic shriek that echoed off the high ceilings. Moretti and Sanchez swung the door open—stacks of wooden crates. One crowbar, one crack, and there it was—gold, unmistakable even in the dim light.

"Untraceable. Unregistered. Gone by morning." Luka stood up. "Twenty-seven pounds per bar. Two hundred grand each. Forty bars. Do the math."

"Eight million," Manny said automatically. And a murder charge when they find my body floating by the fish market."

Luka looked genuinely offended. "Who said anything about murder? We're professionals, not animals. You'll walk away from this with a headache and a story no one will believe, not even at Godmother's after three tequila shots."

"I drink whiskey, you racist schmuck."

Luka laughed and turned to his companions. "How long?"

Manny remembered his laugh from high school.

"Twenty minutes to load," Moretti said, his voice muffled by his balaclava.

"Too long," Sanchez countered. "Harbor patrol makes rounds every thirty minutes. We've got fifteen, tops."

Luka nodded. "Then we work faster."

"Luka, you've been a hard-headed mother since we came up together, but this is the stupidest shit I've seen you do. And that's in a lifetime of stupid shit."

They weren't friends, not really. But it was a small town, and everybody knew everybody else. It didn’t matter that they came from different backgrounds; people got along pretty well and without much trouble. The Croatians and the Italians, the Mexicans and the Blacks all mixed in, and in a few years, their kids would be a bit of everything.

The crew moved efficiently, transferring the gold bricks into duffel bags. Manny watched, calculating angles, distances, and possibilities. If nothing else, fifteen years on the job had taught him patience.

"You won't get far," Manny said. "Port's locked down tighter than the Korean liquor store on Pacific after midnight. Eyes everywhere."

"The system only works because people like you believe in it."

"People like me keep it running."

"People like you keep it broken." Luka zipped up a duffel bag. "You know what this gold is for? Private collection. Some billionaire in Hong Kong who'll lock it away where no one will ever see it. Wealth hoarding while people are starving."

"So you're Robin Hoodivich now?"

Luka laughed, a sound like broken glass. "No. I'm just tired of the view living so close to the waterfront. The view gets better when you go - higher up. But that takes money."

The loading continued in silence until Sanchez suddenly froze. "Someone's coming."

They killed the lights. Manny heard the soft click of a safety disengaging in the darkness.

"Harbor patrol?" Luka whispered.

"Too early," Moretti replied.

A flashlight beam swept across the warehouse windows. Footsteps approached the side door.

"We've got company," Luka said, his voice tight. "Change of plans."

What happened next unfolded with terrible clarity. The side door opened. A massive Samoan security guard—not harbor patrol but private security for the warehouse—stepped in, flashlight in one hand, radio in the other. Manny recognized him as Tama Fa'alogo, who played for Banning back in the day.

"Hello? Anyone in here?" Tama's deep voice echoed through the warehouse.

Tama never saw the blow coming. Sanchez hit him from behind with his pistol. The big Samoan dropped hard, his radio squawking as it hit the floor.

"Shit," Sanchez spit as he said.

"Finish loading," Luka ordered. "We're leaving in two minutes."

They worked frantically, abandoning stealth for speed. Tama lay motionless on the concrete floor, blood pooling around his head like spilled wine.

"Is he dead?" Manny asked, his mouth dry.

Luka checked the man's pulse. "No. But he needs a hospital."

"Then call one. I know you didn't sign up for no murder rap."

"Not happening." Luka straightened up. "We're taking what we have and going. Now."

They had loaded perhaps half their target. Ten bars. Two million dollars. Not the payday they'd planned, but enough to get out.

"What about them?" Moretti nodded toward Manny and the unconscious Tama.

Luka hesitated. Manny saw it—the calculation running behind his eyes. Risk and reward witnesses. One move, and they'd be floating in the channel by sunrise.

"Leave them," Luka finally said. "But flood the place."

Moretti nodded and moved to a wall of pipes. With a few turns of a wrench, water began gushing onto the warehouse floor.

"The water buys time," Luka said. "They'll save the goods first. We'll be long gone."

"And if we drown?"

"Swim." Luka cut Manny's zip ties with a quick slash. "Get him out too if you want to be a hero."

They were gone before Manny could free his ankles, disappearing into the fog with their golden cargo. The warehouse floor was already ankle-deep in water when Manny finally reached the unconscious Tama.

By morning, the gold thieves were long gone when Tama's body was floating near Berth 57, not far from where the old ferry to Terminal Island used to dock. And Manny Ramirez, a fifteen-year veteran of port security, had vanished with them – either another victim or something else.

Warehouse One stood silent and indifferent, like an old fisherman who'd seen too much to speak of it again.

xAP