The Terror of Living: A Novel

by Waite, Urban

  “Are you family?”

  “Only family she has.”

  “Do you want to tell me who you are?”

  “I want you to tell me about the girl.”

  “I can’t tell you about the girl.”

  “Why can’t you do that?”

  Silence. “Who is this?”

  “Is she alive? You can tell me that, can’t you?”

  “I can’t tell you anything till you tell me who you are.”

  Hunt heard something on the line. He thought it was someone else at the hospital listening in. He hung up.

  EDDIE VASQUEZ HAD BEEN DEAD ALMOST TWELVE HOURS by the time Driscoll pulled into the motel. No one had found him till eight in the morning, sitting there at the table with that curtain of blood drawn across him. The local sheriff had been called, the county paramedics, a group of volunteer firefighters who served one way or another as deputies to the sheriff, and Driscoll.

  Drake walked over to the Dairy Queen and looked back at the scene. He could see the EMS ambulance, neon green with flecks of blue. He saw the sheriff’s cruiser and about six big-bodied pickup trucks he imagined hadn’t been there till the man in room 5 came out and found the clerk sandwiched between his car and the neighboring truck. The drag marks were still in the gravel. Driscoll had picked up some small pebbles clotted with blood from the ground near the office and held them in his hand, examining them.

  Best he could tell, the clerk had been shot because she’d seen whatever had been going on in rooms 11 and 12.

  “He’s the agent,” the sheriff had said. “What is it you do?”

  “Identifying bodies seems to be my specialty these days,” Drake said. They were standing across the room from Eddie. In the opposite corner, Driscoll was using a pen to look Eddie over. Nothing had come back on him, and they didn’t know a thing except that he was dead. In one of the dresser drawers, they found a case for a gun that was missing. There were still three clips pressed into the foam, and a slot in the shape of a cylinder.

  “For the silencer,” Driscoll said. “A twenty-two.”

  “Kind of light for these guys,” Drake said.

  “Perfect for these guys. This stuff started popping up in the fifties and sixties, mostly CIA spooks. Small and light enough to carry without gathering attention, the only production gun that could be effectively silenced. In the seventies it was the weapon of choice for mob hits. Whole series of murders taking place in basements all over America. Neighbors didn’t hear a thing.”

  Both the outside door to room 11 and the inside door leading from room 12 had been forced open. There were two bullet holes around the lock of the outside door. The inside door had gone much easier, hollow inside and made of wood as light as balsa, cracked right off the hinges. Near as Drake could figure, the woman had been in room 11.

  “You think she made it?” Drake said.

  “You think she could fit out that back window?”

  “I don’t even know what she would have stood on.”

  “I don’t see a horse trailer anywhere.”

  “Did you find a Lincoln?” Drake asked the sheriff.

  “Only thing we found was that old hatchback up there by the office.” The sheriff was holding a small purse in his hand, and he gave it over to Drake. “Found this tucked up under the seat. There’s some pictures inside. Is that the lady you’re looking for?”

  Drake gave the bag a look through, a picture of two Asian children standing with a young Vietnamese woman. He looked at Driscoll. “This isn’t the woman I met the other day.”

  “Who’d you say that hatchback was registered to?” Driscoll asked.

  “A Roy Clemson out in Lummi.”

  “Roy Clemson doesn’t sound very much like a lady, or an Asian lady at that,” Driscoll said.

  “You think he’s our assassin?” Drake said.

  “Don’t know,” Driscoll said. “I think we better go up there and sit him down for a talk, though.”

  “Looking at these two bodies, I’m half-worried what we’ll find when we get up there.”

  Drake walked around to the back of the motel. There were wide tire tracks in the gravel, same as he’d seen in the mud up by Silver Lake. On the ground he found a paper coffee cup. They were playing catch-up and he knew it.

  At the coffee shack, Drake ordered a coffee. The woman in there looked to be about his age, maybe a few years older. “This your place?” Drake asked.

  “Put it up almost three years ago.”

  “What kind of business you do out of this thing?”

  The woman handed him over the coffee. “Mostly we get people heading up for the mountains, more in the winter when the lifts open up. But we get a good amount in the morning.”

  “Not a lot of people walking up and ordering coffee.”

  “No. Mostly it’s drive-through.”

  “Were you here last night?”

  “No,” the woman said. She was using a dish towel to wipe a bit of spilled coffee by the register. “I have a few girls who do nights for me.”

  “Think they know anything about what happened over there at the motel?”

  “I don’t think they know much about anything yet. They’re both a little dreamy at times.”

  “Who was working last night?”

  The woman paused and gave him a look. “Are you with the sheriff?”

  “In a way.”

  “What kind of way is that?”

  “If you can believe it, I was told this would be a vacation.”

  “Nice vacation.”

  “Yeah, that’s pretty much how my wife put it.”

  “You want me to have the girl give you a call when she gets out of school?”

  “Sure, I just want to talk to her. We have statements from everyone staying in the motel, but I’d like to know if she saw anything.”

  “We close around sunset. I don’t know if she would have seen any of that mess.”

  Drake wrote down his number and gave it to the woman. “Let her know I’d like to talk to her.” He paid for his coffee and thanked the woman.

  IN THE CITY THE RAIN HAD BEGUN TO COME IN WAVES, windswept sheets of water moving up the street like ocean rollers. The two Vietnamese men sat in the Lexus, a half block down from Grady’s house. The car was parked on the opposite side of the street, with a clear view of Grady’s porch and front windows. The house clung to the back of a small hill, overgrown grass lining the foundation and a set of cement stairs that climbed up from the sidewalk and briefly flattened into a path that led to the porch.

  No car in the driveway, just the empty carved-out feel of the house, no lights on, the rain falling everywhere. The patter of water spilling from the sky onto the windows and pinging on the Lexus. The driver watched a cat skitter out from under a torn couch and run half-crazed across the street, where it disappeared into one of the neighbor’s yards.

  The man in the passenger seat dialed a number on his phone and raised it to his ear. Two hundred feet down the block a light came on, silver blue, through the windshield of a darkened car. “Anything?”

  They were waiting, all of them. The rain falling was the only thing to keep them company. No conversation. No jokes.

  The driver slumped down and rested his head against the seat. The rain still falling. Nothing to do but watch the house. Large-shingled siding, scraped gray paint, dull brown in places where it had been swept clean by time.

  Smells of the car, the sour, upturned odor of cigarettes, and the old smells of food. Hands still raw from hefting the boulder. Arms still sore. The man in the passenger seat finished the call and clapped the phone closed. Down the block, the other light went off. They went on waiting.

  GRADY PULLED THE LINCOLN UP ONTO THE INTERSTATE, a forest of white pine surrounding him. He pushed the accelerator and felt the engine take him, leveling the car south on the interstate toward Seattle. Nora’s cell phone rested on the dash. He watched the phone and waited till a strong signal showed on the display. With one hand,
Grady toggled down through the numbers, and when he found Hunt’s number he pushed Send.

  Hunt answered, and the first thing Grady said was, “Found her.”

  After a moment, Hunt said, “What do you want to do?” His voice came out shaking and he fought to calm it.

  “I want you to come find me.”

  “How do I do that?”

  Grady gave him the address of his place in Seattle.

  “It’s that easy?”

  “It’s that easy.”

  “What do I need to do?”

  “You’ll bring me the drugs.”

  “What if I don’t have them?”

  “Of course you do.”

  “They’re inside the girl.”

  “Get them out.” Grady put the phone on speaker and dropped it to the seat beside him.

  “How am I supposed to do that?” Hunt’s voice filled the interior of the Lincoln with the hollow, carved-out echo of speakerphone.

  “I’d use a sharp knife,” Grady suggested.

  “She’s in the hospital.”

  “I don’t know if I have the patience for this,” Grady said. “If I have to go up there and dig them out of her, I will. But it would be better for your wife if you did it yourself.”

  “I’d like to talk to Nora.”

  “Might be a little difficult.” Grady picked a small sun-dried fly carcass off the dash and examined it. He put the windows down a sliver, letting in the cold early winter air, wet smell of pine and low farm air, dust and granite. With his finger he flicked the fly out the window.

  “You better not have done anything to her.”

  “She’s still alive, I think.”

  “What do you mean, ‘I think’? I want to talk to her.”

  “Like I said, it could be difficult.”

  “Why is that?”

  “She’s in the trunk.”

  “What trunk?”

  “The car trunk.”

  “I’m going to kill you.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “No ‘doubt’ about it.”

  “Let’s do a little experiment. What do you say?”

  “First, I want to talk to my wife.”

  “Here is the experiment: I’ll let her live if you bring me the drugs. You’ll bring them to me and I’ll let her live. You put them in my hand, I’ll let her go.”

  “Yes, I get it.”

  “I’m not finished. The drugs are really only the bonus. You can do what you want with them. Really, the question regards you. I am paid to kill you. The loss of the drugs can always be blamed on you. Really, what I’m telling you here is that you’re not trading the drugs for your wife, you’re trading yourself.”

  “What kind of crazy deal is that?”

  “The best one you’re going to get.”

  “That’s not any kind of deal at all.”

  “What did you expect?”

  “Something better.”

  “I don’t think you understand the situation at all. I am paid to kill you. If you don’t die, I don’t get paid. It makes complete sense.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Okay.” Grady laughed. “You bring the drugs, and I’ll give you a ten-second head start. How does that sound?”

  “You really are crazy.”

  “That depends on if you think you can get away. I think that you’re dead anyway. This is a great deal you’re getting here. I think the first one was better, but I’d like to see what you’re going to do about it.”

  “How was the first one better?”

  “Well, let’s treat it like an experiment. If we know that the conclusion of the experiment is that you die, then I guess you would have to go back and look at the choices you made to get there. You don’t bring me the heroin, you die but your wife lives. You bring me the heroin, you get a ten-second head start, your wife lives, and then when I catch up to you I kill you, and depending on the circumstances maybe I kill your wife, too. You see how the first one is the better deal?”

  “What kind of circumstances?”

  “Traffic accidents kill thousands every year.”

  “You’re going to give us a ten-second head start?”

  “Yes.”

  “What if I said I don’t believe you?”

  “That’s what you’d be saying.” Grady paused to look over at the phone on the seat beside him. Hunt didn’t say anything. After a second had passed, Grady thought perhaps Hunt just didn’t understand the terms of the agreement, and said, “There is only one thing certain.”

  “I’ll die?”

  “One way or another.”

  “Let me talk to her, Grady.”

  “You have the address.” Grady reached over and closed the phone.

  DRISCOLL STOPPED AT A GAS STATION OFF THE INTERSTATE. They filled the tank and stood for a moment looking at the wet roads. Drake hadn’t caught the exit number or the name of the town they were in. He knew they were getting close to wherever Hunt had picked the car up, but he didn’t know if it was an hour or fifteen minutes away. While he waited for the tank to fill, he measured the dirt on the streets with his eyes, like a thin layer of mud from the previous night’s rain. He was still in a bit of shock over what they had found at the motel. There was something inside him that didn’t want to go on. Some fear of what they might find.

  “Can you drive?” Driscoll asked.

  “Sure, I can drive.”

  “How’s your defensive driving?”

  Drake gave him a look.

  “What?” Driscoll said.

  “Just give me the keys.”

  Driscoll threw them to him. Drake walked around to the driver’s side and got in. After Driscoll had finished filling the gas tank, he tapped on the roof and leaned down into the open passenger window. “You want anything?”

  “I’ll take a black coffee if they have some.”

  “I’m sure they have some, I just don’t know if you’ll want it.” Driscoll smiled, and Drake could see him straighten and put his hands behind his back. Drake heard a crack. Driscoll had taken off his jacket to drive and he wore only his holster and his badge on his belt, the Desert Eagle in plain view.

  After Driscoll left, Drake stared off toward the end of the lot. The cement curved down and met the street. The street ran on for a ways until it met the interstate rumbling above. With the windows opened he could smell the spilled gasoline on the cement. The sun broke through the clouds and shone down on the lot, the cement seeming to evaporate under it, water vapor rising in the morning light.

  It felt like a bit of peace in an otherwise tragic series of days. What did this woman have to do with all of this? Would they find her dead, too? Though Drake knew it was more than just the wife, that it was more than this. The idea came to him that if he had just let Hunt and the kid through in the mountains, none of this would have happened. What would he have done if Hunt had been his father? Drake honestly couldn’t say. He didn’t want to think about it anymore, didn’t want to make that decision. He hoped he’d never have to. The thought was enough to drop his throat into his stomach, and when he tried to swallow, he felt a little bile rise back up like a bitter reminder.

  WHEN GRADY GOT TO HIS HOUSE HE PULLED UP IN the rain and sat looking down the street. He was a full two car lengths past his driveway, idling the engine with his hand halfway into the knife bag, searching out Eddie’s .22. He’d counted two heads in the Lexus behind him and another three in the car up ahead. He didn’t think Hunt would have done him like that. He didn’t figure Hunt for that sort. No, he thought, Hunt would come at him alone. It wouldn’t be like this.

  Grady took his hand back from the bag and shifted the car into reverse. He backed it up and angled up the drive with the Lincoln’s hood faced out onto the street. With the engine off, he was thinking it over. He guessed them to be the fellows he owed the heroin to. Guessed they’d come after him when he hadn’t delivered on time. But he still had only half the drugs. About fifty pellets he’d dug out of the girl
he’d picked up at the airport. A real screamer, she’d been a pleasure to put the knife through, just to shut her up. Hell, he thought, if they wanted her back, he could do that. He had her packed up real good in the downstairs freezer, sectioned out and ready for disposal. But he didn’t think they were here for her, and he didn’t think five of them had come just to collect the heroin. He knew these men had come to do him harm and he thought he’d let them try.

  He sat in the Lincoln with the heat going. Better just to keep the heroin. Better for everyone. The heroin was inside the house, in the downstairs freezer. Nothing moved on the street, the rain still falling and the five men just sitting there waiting for him.

  WHEN SHE WOKE, THE TRUNK WAS STILL CLOSED over her. The car had stopped. She heard the patter of rain on the metal above her. Her first breaths brought the smell of asphalt and dampened upholstery to her nostrils. With her hand she felt the swollen skin of her face, the raised cheek, the welt along her temple, skin pulled tight with the swelling.

  Nora thought of the woman in the motel parking lot. What had she done to deserve a thing like that? What did anyone deserve? Nora felt she deserved it. Felt she had been deserving it all her life, ever since she’d met Hunt. She’d fallen in love with him, drawn to him and his past, someone hurt, the wounds still visible. Nora there with the salve, with the bandage and the desire to heal.

  The motel clerk had come out of the office. She must have seen some of what had gone on. Certainly not the gun, that wasn’t possible. No one would have walked out that way had they seen a gun. Nora struggling, her kidnapper with his hands wrapped around her, his big arms holding her, stronger and more solid than he looked for a man of average height.

  One, two, three. It was that quick. Still holding Nora by the waist, he reached his hand out, and there was the whisper of the bullet as it left the .22. The woman looked down at herself, at the spread of blood coming across her stomach, and a millisecond later her shoulder sprang back, and then her head. The woman hit the gravel. She had probably put that gravel in, she had probably raked it and filled it in, smoothed it out, cleaned it, made sure it was always welcoming, always professional. Never did the woman picture herself laid out on it. Nora knew that, just as surely as she knew her own situation.