by Waite, Urban
Grady hadn’t checked in. The lawyer looked again at his watch and crossed to the kitchen, where he opened the faucet and watched the water run. He passed a hand through the stream and brought it to his face, running his fingers down along the groove of his mouth and off his chin.
When Grady called ten minutes later, the lawyer wanted to know what had gone wrong, what Grady had been thinking. Not delivering the girl as he was supposed to, Hunt still alive, all of it spinning out of control. The lawyer was standing in his kitchen, looking down into the sink, a whirlpool opening up before him.
It wasn’t just Hunt who was in danger now, it was all of them; the lawyer knew this, knew that if the situation couldn’t be fixed soon, there would be a lot for him to answer for. He gave Grady the address of Hunt’s place in Auburn. He gave him the name of the wife. He gave him a description of Eddie and left it at that.
TWO MEN SAT IN A TINTED LEXUS, WATCHING THE tourists mill around the downtown ferry docks. One of the men, in an Armani sweater, leaned forward in his seat and checked the dash clock. He blew smoke from a cigarette. Music played softly from the car stereo.
“What time is it?” the second man asked. He wore a similar sweater, rolled neck, with a small horseman embroidered on his left breast. The sleeves were too long for him and he continually pushed them up. The two men were speaking in Vietnamese, both of them in their early thirties.
“Fuck this,” the man in the Armani sweater said. “We should have just gone up there ourselves.”
“She acted stupid. Acted real dumb, getting off the plane like that.”
“Should have gotten her ourselves.”
“We don’t need that trouble. That’s what we pay the lawyer for. They would have pulled us over at the border. No doubt about it.”
“At least we’d know something then. At least we’d have some clue what was going on.”
“And what about the other girl? The one who was supposed to come in yesterday?”
“The lawyer is fucking us, that’s what.”
“What do you want to do?”
“I don’t like working this way. But we do it because we can’t do it any other way. You find a better system, you tell me. She was supposed to be delivered straight from the airport.”
“Dumb-ass girl.”
“Fuck the girl. As long as we get what she’s carrying.”
“What do you want to do?” the man in the Armani sweater said. He brought a hand to his mouth and removed the cigarette. He sat in the car, relaxed, unbothered by the lateness of the girl. The only thing about him that moved quickly was his mouth.
“Call the lawyer again.”
The man leaned forward and placed the cigarette in the ashtray. He dialed the number. When the secretary picked up, he said, “I want to speak to the lawyer.” The secretary put him on hold.
The man in the rolled-neck sweater watched him from the passenger side of the car. “Easy,” he said.
“Two girls got on a plane and neither has shown up. Sounds easy, but nothing about it is.”
The receptionist came back on the line and told him the lawyer hadn’t come in that morning.
“Tell him he better find our girls. He better find them fast.”
THE ONLY THING GRADY KNEW WAS THAT HUNT WOULD run. If Hunt had been smart he’d have stayed in one place and let Grady find him. But he knew Hunt wouldn’t do that. He’d been running a long time. Let it end, Grady thought, just let it be over. But still he took a certain excitement from the chase. He didn’t like it, but he could appreciate it. The small loose thread, the random element, something he hadn’t calculated.
He took the small slip of paper with Hunt’s information on it from his pocket and looked it over. The interstate kept going in front of him. Cars turned down past Seventy-fifth and he could see the interstate straighten and the wide view of the city in front of him. He drove on, the address in his head. He placed the paper on the dash, right next to the speedometer, and watched them both.
When he got out of the car, he stood looking at Hunt’s house for a long time. He’d driven past it and pulled the car onto a gravel shoulder about a quarter mile off. He could see the downward slope of the roof through the trees. The odor of animals was all around him. Smells of horse manure came to him on the crisp, cold air. From the car he took the bag and went up the road, jogging now and feeling the wind come over him. When he found a small horse path leading into the woods, he followed it, keeping behind the trees to watch the house. He tried to move without being noticed, low and close to the ground. He couldn’t see anything in the windows. Not even a light or the flicker of a television.
He knelt and assembled the AR-15. From the bag, he took a few extra clips and stuffed them into his back pockets. With the sight he could look into the house, and he knelt there, watching, for thirty minutes. Nothing moved. The stables were at the far end of the property, and he went there, using the fence and then the building for cover. He could only hope for someone to be inside the house.
Moving through the stables, he saw that the three horses had been brought into the fenced pasture. He stood in the shadow of the stables for five minutes, using the scope to look through the windows of the house from a different angle. Still nothing moved. He went to the fence, in the wide, open backyard, and looked at the house. With age, the siding had turned from white to cream like the surrounding alder bark, the roof good, and windows in every room. He could pick out the rooms by the symmetry of their placement. The kitchen, the back door, the front entranceway visible through it, a living room, and the upstairs bedrooms and bathroom. The horses were watching from a distance, and he called to them but they didn’t come. He raised the rifle and sighted them in the scope, their big eyes looking back at him, the constant movement of their long jaws as they busied themselves with their food. He put the rifle down and walked to the house.
With the butt of the AR-15 he knocked out one of the back door’s panes and reached inside to turn the lock. Inside, he found a house with wood-panel floors. He listened—nothing besides the sound of his own breathing and the brief shift of his weight on the floor. On the couch he found a bed made. He walked to it and pulled the sheets away, he looked under the cushions, then he knelt and looked beneath the couch. He didn’t know what he was looking for. He still carried the AR-15 and he folded the stock now and held the muzzle toward the rest of the house. When he stood up, he could see a car pass on the road just beyond the drive. The shades were open and he watched a child turn in the backseat and look at him. He still carried the rifle but didn’t move to hide it. He watched the car pass and then disappear down the road into the trees.
He found the small dining room. Two of the chairs were not pushed in. He pushed them in and then pulled them out and sat in one and faced the other. Upstairs he found a bed that was not made. He looked at it and went into the closet and looked at the clothes. He could smell a woman’s perfume. He ran a silk blouse through his fingers. He tried to find a suitcase, but the only bag he found was a duffel. For a short time he lay on the bed with the rifle laid out beside him. Overhead he heard rain begin to fall and patter on the roof. He looked up at the ceiling, then rolled over and noticed the phone. He dialed *69 and waited for the sound of the pulse.
THE GIRL SWEATED THROUGH THE SHEETS. NANCY sat by her with a bowl of ice water. They were waiting now and hoping she would come out of it. Thu’s eyes were just slits of white with the small, dark sliver of her irises visible through the lids. Her face was red where Nancy had slapped her a moment before, saying, “Come on!” Slapping her and then taking her by the shoulders and shaking her till her eyes opened. “Stay awake, goddamn it.”
Hunt could see the outline of Thu’s body beneath the clothes. He took in the sweat all over and the way the pores on her face beaded with water, which collected and then ran down her face onto the bed, making dark patches on the sheets. His phone vibrated again. Nancy looked up. Hunt didn’t know where Roy was.
“Who is this?�
� Hunt said, holding the phone. The call had come from his own house.
“You know who this is.”
Hunt walked out into the living room. He could see the backyard, the big canister in which Roy had burned the sheets.
“What a silly question,” Grady continued. “Who did you think it was going to be?”
“Do you think you’re going to find me?”
“I was thinking I’d start with your wife and ask her.”
“She’s not there.”
“Yes, it’s unfortunate for me, though I think it’s more unfortunate for you.”
“There’s nothing unfortunate about it.” There was a pause and then Hunt heard something break; he thought it was glass, though it could have been a lamp or a mirror.
“What’s the name of the brown horse with the white notch along the nose?”
“Hermes.”
“Clever,” Grady said.
There was the sound of the rifle, a quick three-shot burst. Hunt didn’t hear anything else. He didn’t hear the horse, or the bullets hit. The phone just hung there in his hand and he listened, not sure what to say.
“How many horses do you keep in your stables?” Grady asked.
Hunt didn’t say anything.
“To me, they’re just animals. I’d bet they’re something altogether different to you.”
“Why would you do that?”
“You know I’m going to find your wife. I’ll find her and we can do this again. Would you like me to call you back then?”
“If you were going to find her, you would already have done it. You were just hoping she was there.”
“No. I was hoping you were here.”
Hunt heard the rifle fire once more. This time he heard the horse call out. He heard it call again.
“I’ll take this one slow,” Grady said.
“I’m going to kill you,” Hunt said, and he thought he really meant it. For the first time he felt he really did. The sound of the rifle again.
“She’ll never run in the races.”
“You’re sick.”
“You could make it stop.”
“You’ve got nothing and you’re desperate.”
“I can start with your wife, then I can get the girl. I expect I’ll need to kill her anyway to get the drugs out of her. I can do this all before I do you. I’ll probably make you watch. You want to save someone, you want to save this last horse? You should come over here and meet me. I guarantee it will be fast. You’re already dead anyway.”
“The girl is dead.”
“That would be very unfortunate for you. She was buying you time.”
“You don’t know a goddamn thing.”
“I know where you’ll be very soon.”
“Yes, I bet you do.”
“You’re not going to meet me, are you?”
“What do you think?”
“Maybe you’d like to listen? This will become very familiar to you.”
Hunt heard Grady put the phone down. He guessed Grady was in the bedroom, where the windows looked onto the pasture and the horses. The injured horse was making that whining sound, a sound he’d heard from a horse only once, a horse with a splintered bone lying on its side on the track. Hunt heard the shot, then nothing else.
GRADY WALKED DOWNSTAIRS. THERE WAS A CERTAIN pleasure he’d taken in shooting the two horses. He trailed a hand along the wall, and as he went, he hummed to himself. It was a song of his own creation, perhaps something he’d heard in the past, though now changed and used in a different context. In his other hand he carried the rifle. When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he went to the small fireplace in the living room and made a fire. He built it up. He sat on the couch and watched television. He relished the idea of taking Hunt’s life apart piece by piece, like separating sinew and tendon, skin and muscle, breaking him down.
When the fire had burned for about ten minutes and he could see the coals beginning to develop, he took red, glowing logs and placed them under the couch. He put others beneath the drapes. The smell of smoke and burnt plastic began to fill the room. He went into the kitchen and turned every valve of the range until he could hear gas.
Outside, the rain was still falling. He stepped down onto the yard and he felt the wet earth beneath him. The smell of horses and something new, something of his own creation, smoke and fire, almost claylike. At the pasture, he stopped to look over the bodies of the two horses he’d shot. The first had taken the three shots lengthwise, one to the neck and then the others falling farther back. The second horse he’d taken his time with, a shot at the front quarter, then the back, and the final in the head. Trails of blood ran off the wounds and down onto the ground.
The third horse stood nearby but did not make a move as Grady came to the fence and looked him over. The rain kept falling. There was that faint earth smell to the air, puddles, and raindrops. Grady watched the horse, the light from the house reflected in its big eyes.
The house blew then, startling the horse. Grady raised a hand to look at the house, as if shading his eyes from a strong sun. Flames in all the windows. He wished Hunt could hear the sound; he wanted him to know there was no coming back.
Grady felt the rain’s cold touch already soaking through his clothes and on his skin. Streams of water rolled down from his hair and dropped from his nose, collecting along his jawline and falling from his chin. The fire was a brilliant hue of orange and red, alive in the gray falling rain. He saw the horse back there, still running along the far fence, rounding the corner and returning almost to the midpoint of the pasture and looking on. “Nothing to be afraid of,” Grady said. He was watching the horse. Then with both hands he raised the rifle and took aim.
WHAT’S YOUR REASON FOR COMING TO CANADA?”
The border guard looked into a black Lexus with the two Vietnamese men sitting in it. The man in the driver’s seat leaned forward, his teeth stained a cigarette yellow. He spoke with a slight accent. “Shopping, sightseeing.”
The border guard looked from his face to the passport she held in front of her. She put his name into the computer. “Where are you coming from?”
“Seattle.”
“Whose car is this?”
“Mine.”
“What line of work are you in?”
“I’m a plumber.”
“Nice car for a plumber,” the guard said.
“You should see my house,” the man joked. “It’s a real dump.”
“Can you tell me your license plate number?” He gave it to her. “What about you, sir?” She leaned down to see the second man, sitting in the passenger seat. She typed his name into the computer. “What line of work are you in?”
“I’m his boss.”
“You own the plumbing business?”
“No, I run it.”
“You must do a good business.”
“Not really,” the second man said.
The guard turned back to the driver. “How long will you be in Canada?”
“Just for the day.”
“Any firearms or drugs in the vehicle?”
“No.”
“Anything you’ll be leaving in Canada?”
“No.”
“Have a good trip, guys.”
The Lexus pulled forward.
EDDIE LEFT THE TELEVISION RUNNING, THE VOLUME up high, and all the lights on in his room. Outside, he could feel the cold that had come with the rain and the dull gray of the day as it came on. To the right he could see Nora’s motel window, shades drawn, but the light on, and he assumed she was still there. He went to his car and was careful to ease the door shut behind him. From his pocket he dug out his cell phone and dialed the number. All over the car roof he could hear the rain falling. He saw it on the windshield, and he thought that even if Nora looked out the window, she wouldn’t be able to tell he was in there.
After the secretary patched him through to the house, the lawyer came on, saying, “This must be some kind of joke.”
“
No joke at all,” Eddie said.
“I thought I’d explained this clearly to you.”
“You did.”
“Then why did your man know about it?”
“I didn’t say a thing to him. I just told him where to be and at what time. I didn’t say anything else.”
“Don’t lie to me, Eddie.”
“I’m not lying.”
“This has been made clear to you, correct?”
“Yes, it is all clear. It’s a bad deal, but it’s the only deal I was given.”
“It’s a good deal, Eddie.”
“Not from where I’m standing.”
“I’d be very happy to be alive from where you’re standing.”
Eddie didn’t say anything; he was sorry enough as it was, felt shame like he’d never felt before, even knowing from the beginning about the kid. It was shameful, all of it. Nothing would ever make him feel better about what he had done. He thought about taking his own life, but then it wouldn’t matter, Hunt was still dead, it didn’t matter.
“You know this is turning into a real headache for us.”
“I imagine it is.”
“Don’t be smart, Eddie.”
“I didn’t mean to be.”
“Sympathy, then? You feel sympathetic for the fuckup your man has put us in?”
“Yes,” Eddie agreed, “that is what I feel toward the situation.” There was a pause on the other end. Eddie cursed himself, cursed his mouth, but didn’t say anything and waited for the man to come back on the line.
“I’m going to send someone to see you. He’s an old acquaintance of Phil Hunt’s. He should be able to help us out, figure this whole thing out for us. We’re not the types to give second chances, Eddie. You should know this. You should feel grateful.”
“I am,” Eddie said, though he didn’t feel that way at all. He felt a sickness in his stomach, an ache he could not fix. He gave the man the address of the motel. Then, after it was done, he sat in the car and listened to the rain.
