by Waite, Urban
He walked on, making a straight line toward his car, careful not to rush. He could see his car across the lot, sitting there, seagulls on the fence posts, the masts of sailboats, white and bobbing with the movement of the water. Behind him, he heard a woman scream. He walked on. Grady wove through the cars, bumper to bumper. The sound of something hitting the water hard, the burst of air bubbles. When he turned to look back, the attendant’s car was no longer where he’d left it.
A crowd had gathered around the ramp, and there in the water, floating out to sea, was the attendant’s car. He watched it only briefly, the car bobbing there on the water, air escaping, and the vehicle going under. If Hunt still had the boat, he’d need to find another ramp. He knew Hunt was still out there. All Grady could think about was time. Time to get east of the mountains, find the little motel the lawyer had told him about, and hope for an improvement in his day. He was pulling out of the lot when the car finally went under.
THEIR MAN AT THE AIRPORT HAD TOLD THEM WHERE to go. They parked the Lexus four spots down and on the other side of the street from the house and looked up toward it. At the end of the block, they could see a city bus pull to a stop, then move off. The cross street above them was busy at all times of the day with cars and people passing. In the late afternoon, with the sunlight directly in front of them on the horizon, the oranges and reds painted the scene like a fire, the figures crossing the street nothing but shadows of coal. The driver lit a cigarette and sat watching the house. Every couple of breaths he released a stream of smoke from the window.
The house sat close to the street, with the front stairs leading almost to the sidewalk. Cars were parked in nearly every space along the street, several with pieces of windblown trash resting against the tires. It was not a well-kept part of town, though perhaps at some time it had been. The plain white house was made of wood boards, the roof cracked and bandaged with tar patches, shingles the color of sandpaper. One central floor looked out over the street, with a window high up that was probably the attic. No one appeared to be home.
Several people walked by on the street, but not the person they were looking for. After forty-five minutes passed, a man carrying a grocery bag stepped from the far curb and crossed the street toward the house. He climbed the stairs and, in the same moment, brought from his pocket a set of keys that the two men in the Lexus could see clearly.
“I wish I had my gun,” the driver said as he opened the door and emerged onto the street. He was careful to push the door of the car closed with his body, his weight shifting to the car, but the door making no sound. He flicked away the cigarette, then crossed the street toward the man, who had reached the top of the stairs and stood with his keys at the lock and his opposing arm wrapped around the grocery bag.
By the time the man opened the door and leveled the bag with his knee, the driver had reached the porch and, without stopping, punched the man in the right kidney. The man buckled, and the grocery bag fell from his arms. The driver then hooked the man’s throat with his forearm and rammed his knee straight and with force into the back leg of the man, who seemed to flop over and put his weight full onto the driver, his face caught just above the driver’s forearm, a strange smile on his lips. The driver pulled him through the door and into the house.
From the car, the man with the bag full of hardware supplies watched all of this. He waited a beat before he, too, rose from the car, carrying the bag of tools in his hand up the stairs toward the house. The door was open like a mouth, blackness beyond, and into this the man stepped and closed the door behind him.
DRAKE PASSED A HAND THROUGH THE ASH. HE WAS kneeling in the wreckage of Hunt’s house. All around him the fire still smoldered, pieces of the frame rising out of the black shape. In front of him the bricks of the fireplace stood, painted black with carbon. A water heater that he guessed had been under the stairs was now visible. The house was a complete loss. He looked down at the ash. He put his hands together and clapped the grit from them. Little puddles were everywhere, from the fire trucks and the rain. He clapped his hands together again and stood.
He had been here only a day before. He tried to remember the man’s face, brown skin, slight acne scars near the chin, unshaven, his hand in Drake’s, strong but well fleshed in the palms. No bodies had been found except for the horses. The fire had burned hot with the gas, and not much was left. But the fire inspectors guessed it wasn’t hot enough to burn bones, and they hadn’t found any yet.
Nora had been generous with him. He thought of the man watching while Nora went back inside to get him the number, to offer him help. Had she known Drake had taken a shot at her husband just a couple of nights before, aimed to wound him, maybe kill him, would she have acted as she did then? Drake tried to think of taking that same shot now and he didn’t think he could. He pictured Nora up there on that same horse. The crosshairs of the sight, the horse coming into view. He couldn’t do it. Not now.
He walked over to Driscoll, the grit and ash sticking to his boots, growing on him and caked to his soles, heavy and cumbersome. When he reached the horse fence, he hit them against the wood and watched the gunk fall. Driscoll was leaning over one of the horses. Several men in suits that looked almost like biohazard gear were milling about near another. “They’ve cleaned this one off,” Driscoll said. “Come over here, give it a look.”
Drake stepped through an opening in the wood and ducked his head. He held his hat and walked over to where Driscoll knelt examining the body. “Quarter horse,” Drake said.
“How can you tell?”
“Strong front legs, short, and a bit stocky.”
“You learn that on the farm?”
“It was the type of horse my father used to ride.”
“Talked with the owner about ten minutes ago. Wasn’t happy to hear about this. Says he’s been boarding this one here for about three years now, never thought anything of it.”
“It’s a shame.”
“Named him Hermes.”
“Good name, must have been a fast horse.”
“Says he was going to sell him this year, sixty thousand. You believe that?”
“Can’t say I do.”
“Probably just out for the insurance money.”
“It would be nice to think that was the only thing involved,” Drake said. He knelt and ran a hand along the belly of the horse. He could feel the muscle, the well-cared-for coat. He tried to remember if he’d seen this horse the other day. But then he put it out of his mind.
“This guy, Hunt, better know how to really ride. He’s got one hell of a chase coming after him.”
“Wish I’d caught him that first day.”
“No, you don’t. He’d be dead in that cell just like the kid.”
“No, I don’t,” Drake repeated. “You think he’s got any chance?”
“I think if we get to him first he does. Ask him to give up a few names. I can’t say that he’ll avoid doing any time, but it’s surely better than what’s out there looking for him now.”
Drake looked down at the horse, milky eyes, the flies already starting to land. “Trailer isn’t here. Neither is that Lincoln. Honda I saw the other day is charred all to hell back there where the garage used to be.”
“You think any of those vehicles are registered to their right names?”
“Probably not.”
“I can run it through the DMV and see what comes of it.”
“Lincoln definitely didn’t pull that trailer out of here.”
“Something big?”
“From what I saw, had to be.”
“How many horses you count yesterday?”
Drake looked around. Far off in the middle of the pasture he could see the third. “More than this,” he said.
THE KNOCK CAME AGAIN ON EDDIE’S DOOR. HE CHECKED the slide on the small pistol and put it through the back of his belt. On the bed the case was laid out, foam interior with cutouts for four magazines and a removable silencer. He put it under the bed. He h
ad never used the pistol.
When he put his eye to the door, he could see Nora out there. He cleared his throat. The night was just beginning to come on, and he could see cars passing behind her on the road. She turned to look as one drove by, splashing a puddle, the sound of the wet tires running on the cement. He opened the door, and her attention was immediately on him.
He let her into the room, and when she had gone to the small chair in the corner, where two chairs sat around a cheap wood-veneer table, she said, “I talked to Phil.”
Eddie went over to the bed and sat on the edge. “Did he tell you what happened to him?”
Nora looked around the room. When she met Eddie’s eyes, he was staring at her, waiting for an answer. “He said the boat sank.”
“Did he say where he was?”
“Somewhere north, he didn’t sound too sure. I think he barely made it down the coast after getting the drugs.”
“So he has the drugs?”
“In a way.”
“In what way?”
“They’re inside a girl.”
“Inside her?”
“That’s what he said.”
“This isn’t at all what I talked to Hunt about.”
“No, I’d expect not. Didn’t see yourself in this motel either?” Nora tried to laugh, but it came out strangled and fell away.
“Did he tell you where to find him?”
“No. I gave him the address here. He said he’d come to us.”
“Good,” Eddie said. “I hope he has those drugs. It could be the only thing saving us.”
“What do you think happened up there?” Nora had her hands on her legs, and when she said this, Eddie could see the worry in her eyes. He looked away.
“I don’t know what happened up there.”
“Something went wrong, right?”
“Something went wrong.”
“What is a girl with a stomach packed full of drugs doing in all this?”
“I think she has very little say in it.”
“It’s sick, you know.”
“It’s how it is, Nora.”
“I don’t understand it anymore.”
“It’s the same as it’s always been. People need a product. We take it from the producer and bring it to the seller. That’s how simple it is. This thing isn’t going to stop because the government says it will. We’re happy when they get involved—drives the price up. We can sell it for anything we want, and people will buy it because they can’t not.”
“But a girl?”
“What am I supposed to say to you?”
“You didn’t know about this before?”
“Not a thing.”
Nora looked to the window; the shades were drawn, but she could pick out the shapes of things beyond. “I told him if things went bad to get out of there. I told him to come right back to the house. Now I’m not even there, and I don’t know where he is.”
“We just need to wait this thing out a little bit longer. Phil’s a smart guy. He’ll come here and then you’ll see.”
THE MAN SAT NAKED IN AN ARMCHAIR PULLED FROM his own dining room. It was not this that seemed the most startling to the driver, but the blood that ran from his ankles and from his wrists. The man with the hardware tightened the hose clamps around the naked limbs of the man seated in the chair until the skin tore against the thin metal bands.
Both the driver and his boss stood back and watched as the man raged against the chair and the metal that held him. His arms began to grow slick with blood and finally he stopped, and it was at this time they began to ask him questions.
A litter of kittens had recently been born in the house, and their mother sat in a bin on the warm living room floor. The driver had drawn the shades, and the house had the tin smell of fabricated metal and blood as well as the warmth of the body and the close smell of skin that the pull of the shades only made closer.
As the man answered the questions, the driver sat on the couch and played with the kittens. They were blond like their mother, but a few had black markings, and as they climbed along his lap, he could feel that their new claws had emerged. They were not yet attuned to the screams of the man or the strain of his voice. Life in this house had not yet taught them these things, though the driver wondered if they would ever be well acquainted with this kind of thing.
The driver’s boss had come to the point in the questioning at which Thu had arrived at the boat and the two men had taken her out onto the water. The man in the chair had answered as best he could, though at times the driver’s boss had tightened the bands on his wrists and around his ankles.
“We waited a full day for the girl,” the driver’s boss said. “It is not a secure feeling, this waiting. To invest your own time in something from the beginning and feel the whole operation has been fouled in the process by an outside force that has been fully out of our control. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”
The man shuddered, and a thin vein of spittle stretched from his lip and fell to his thigh. “I don’t know what you want me to say. I did what I was told.”
“We expected you would, but in the absence of the lawyer, we have come to you, because you were identified as the one who picked up the girl at the airport. Do you see why we have come to you now?”
“I didn’t steal the fucking heroin,” the man said. He was at the point of crying, and the man who was questioning him hit him hard across the face and let the sting sink into the flesh before speaking again.
“You have been identified as the last one to see the heroin. I don’t think we can make this any clearer.”
The man in the chair didn’t say anything.
“You are accountable in that way. Unless the lawyer tells us different, we have nothing to go on besides this fact.”
Still the man would not speak.
“We are missing ninety thousand dollars of heroin, almost a quarter of a million if you count the other girl, though we know she is not your fault, and I only mention her to show you our obvious agitation. I am only trying to be truthful with you, as I would hope you could be truthful with us.”
The tears came then, and another slim line of saliva, tinted pink with the blood from a cut in his mouth. “I didn’t take the heroin.”
“Yes, that is what you keep saying, but again, we don’t have it, nor do we have any other names but your own.” The boss motioned for the driver to get up from the couch. Several of the kittens he had been playing with followed after him and slipped, purring, against his leg where the two men stood together. The boss reached into the hardware bag and brought out the blunt-nosed garden shears and handed them to the driver. The driver seemed to know what to do and he went to the man with the funny smile and pulled up his pinky and stretched it away from his hand.
“This is very simple,” the boss said. “You have three knuckles on that finger. You will lose one every time you don’t give me the right answer. Do you understand?”
The man in the chair did not look away from his pinky.
“Hey,” the driver said, “do you understand?”
A half nod of the head.
“What happened to the heroin?”
“I gave it to the man in the other boat.”
“Where is this man now?”
“How am I supposed to know that? He should have brought her to you.”
No one said anything, and the driver cut the first knuckle away from the man’s pinky. It fell to the floor, the man screaming. The kittens that had been at the driver’s feet soon picked up the nub and began to toy with it.
Blood fell freely from the severed finger and pooled on the floor, first one drop, then the next. The pool grew. The man who had been screaming clenched his jaw and held back something that looked to boil inside him.
“Where is this man now?”
“He was older, sandy hair, maybe six feet, he was wearing… fuck… I don’t know what he was wearing. You’re fucking crazy.”
The driver made his ne
xt cut, and for a moment there was only the sound of the second knuckle falling to the floor, then the scream, and the blood pattering on the floor.
When the man looked down at his pinky, he saw first the red nub and then, farther down, the kittens at his chair and the blood falling. One of the kittens had looked up and was standing with its back legs on the floor and its front on the leg of the chair, and it was licking at the drops of blood as they fell from what remained of the finger.
“Where is the heroin?” the boss asked again.
“Fuck you, fuck both of you.” He was crying again and he wouldn’t look up. The saliva dripped from his mouth and slipped in a train along his thigh, where it fell to the seat of the chair.
When the two men left, he was still sitting there. The driver could see the beat of his chest and the defeated way in which he sat in the chair, no longer trying to break free from the metal bands but submitting to them. He was still bound, still naked. The pool of blood had grown to a puddle, and the kittens sat licking at it and mewing to each other. When the driver closed the door, the last thing he saw was the little cat that had leaned upright against the chair with blood all over its face, climbing the leg of the bound man, using its newfound claws to dig into the man’s flesh and pull itself up.
HUNT DROVE AWAY FROM THE HOSPITAL. HE’D GONE through the town fast before, with not even enough time to give it a look. But he looked now. Watched the streets. Sure at any moment that a police cruiser would come after him, that someone would have called him in. Someone from the hospital. Perhaps even Nancy and Roy.
The town was what he expected it to be, houses that looked much like the rest. At the center of town he stopped for a light, and he saw people staring at him. Across the street was a pharmacy. Next to that a diner, then a bank and a post office. He sat in the little hatchback and he figured they knew the car. They might even have known Roy and Nancy. He smiled and gave the people a wave. A father of two kids waved back, but the kids just stared.
