The Terror of Living: A Novel

by Waite, Urban

  He had wanted to kill Hunt at the dock, but it wasn’t what had been asked for. He was to let Hunt do the exchange, kill him, take the drugs, and then sink the boat. Make it look like an accident. It was easy to hide a murder under a half mile of water.

  From their talk at the boat launch, he could tell Hunt would never be the type to let him get close. Not offering his name, barely letting Grady get close enough to offer his hand. Not like the last man Grady had killed, an ex-sergeant in the reserves, someone who had shared a beer with him at a bar. Someone who had at one point been in business with the lawyer, who had been a smuggler just like Hunt. Grady had been paid to run him off, scare him, perhaps even take a digit or two and leave him like that. But the sergeant had been easier, drunk, stumbling out to his car to take a piss in the cool night air with Grady following. Someone who Grady could see wouldn’t be missed. No children, no wife, just a string of bad decisions, decisions that had cost the lawyer a considerable amount of money. Grady had slit the ex-sergeant’s throat behind the bar, the sergeant’s pants open and his penis in his hands. Blood and urine collected in a puddle on the cement lot. The lawyer had paid him well for that, simply to make the man disappear. Did it matter how?

  Grady’s cell phone rested on a grip pad in front of him. The lawyer had called several more times and Grady knew he’d missed the meeting with the Vietnamese. He didn’t need the lawyer to tell him this. Soon it would all be finished, Hunt dead, and the heroin delivered. Again, he thought, the how of it didn’t matter, as long as the job was done, as long as the heroin was delivered and Hunt was dead. Everyone would have their satisfaction soon.

  He thought about that ex-sergeant, throat slit, bleeding out onto the cement, a death rattle going through him, the tremor of it through the pool of blood and urine, like windswept waves passing across a lake. He’d reached down then, pulling at the man’s ankles, and begun to drag him across the gravel, a stainless table waiting at his house, a hacksaw and whatever else Grady could imagine.

  The memory of the ex-sergeant passed with the bounce of the boat across the water, knife bag at his feet, riding out the waves with Grady, knives and rifle loaded and ready. It would be a shame to use the scope on Hunt, killing from a distance, but Grady knew from experience that it was best not to be seen at all.

  HUNT SLOWED THE BOAT. THE OUTBOUND FERRY passed, and he could hear the distant pull of the engines, the deep thrumming of the ferry as it crossed in the night toward Victoria. He turned his engines off completely, all around him the lap of the water against the sides of the Bayliner. What could he do but wait and hope and feel the water all around and know this was how it would be and how his life would always be?

  From his pocket he removed a pack of cigarettes he’d hidden from Nora. He lit one and felt the familiar wash of the tobacco and his head going up into the air for that brief moment. He brought out a pair of marine binoculars and sat watching the ferry and checked his watch. It wouldn’t be long now.

  The ferry passed, and in two minutes he felt the dark rise of its wake and the water moving under him. He was sitting in the captain’s seat, swiveled around so he could look out on his engines and the waves as they gripped into them. The cigarette was gone, and with it he felt the cool night wash over him, a light breeze feeding off the water and racing inland over the ocean.

  He heard the soft drone of another boat, building for a minute until it was a throaty whine, then ceasing altogether. From where he sat, he could see the dark boat come out of the night, drifting almost sideways in the current. Night all around them and the boats drifting together, still and silent, like two shadows resting on the water. The other boat was larger than Hunt’s, with a big forward cabin and a raised cockpit. Two men, one at the controls and another waiting on the aft deck. Both watching Hunt.

  When the two boats drew closer, Hunt recognized one of the men from past deals. Standing at the gunwale, Hunt called for a line.

  “Surprised to see you here,” the man said.

  “What do you mean by that?” Hunt said, taking the line as the two boats drew abreast and the gunwales aligned.

  “I wouldn’t have expected it. That’s all.”

  “What wouldn’t you have expected?”

  “This kind of deal. I just wouldn’t have thought it would be your thing.”

  “I’m finding the available options limited.”

  “The whole thing makes me feel a little strange,” the man said.

  “Everything lately, considering.”

  “Yes, we heard about the kid, the one you were working with in the mountains.”

  Hunt was silent for a moment. He hadn’t thought it would be like this and he hadn’t expected the guilt he would feel over the kid. “Did you hear he was dead?”

  The man was silent for a moment. “How did it happen?”

  “In the holding cell, before they walked him across the sky bridge.”

  The man at the cockpit came down to join them at the gunwale. The dull red light from the cockpit shone on all three of them. Above, a passing break in the clouds focused the moonlight on them, the two-dimensional flatness of light and dark showing how they took the news in the cavernous shadows of their faces. All of them were standing together, and as they talked, Hunt untied the bumpers from where they sat, pinned between the two boats.

  “You should feel lucky it wasn’t you,” said the man Hunt knew. He was wearing a blue sweater with a light down vest.

  The other, who wore a sweatshirt and had a strange smile that never seemed to go away, looked off at a ferry bound for the mainland. Hunt did not look up from what he was doing but continued to work, untying his bumpers, readying them for the shipment of drugs.

  “You know you’re not going to need those bumpers,” the man with the funny smile said.

  “But the drugs?”

  The man laughed.

  “I’m surprised you’re not dead,” the man with the funny smile said.

  “I’ve been saying that for years,” the man in the sweater said, watching Hunt and waiting for a smile to come across Hunt’s face. And when none came, the man said, “You are lucky, you know. We could have been asked to shoot you right here, and no one would have known a thing.”

  “Were you?”

  “Would you still be here?”

  Hunt didn’t say anything. He stepped back from the gunwale and stood watching the two men. The man with the funny smile went inside the cabin of the boat, where Hunt heard voices.

  “What did he mean, I won’t be needing the bumpers?” Hunt asked the first man. He was beginning to feel uneasy about the whole thing.

  “Don’t you know?” the man said. “They really are playing you, aren’t they? Don’t you know what you’re here for?”

  “I don’t know a damn thing,” Hunt said.

  “I don’t want a part of this any more than you do,” the man said. “But it’s the way things are going. It’s the new premium of the business. I don’t think I need to tell you what will happen if this gets messed up.”

  “They would kill you,” the man with the funny smile said to Hunt, stepping out onto the deck from inside the cabin. “I’m surprised you’re still alive as it is.” He held a young woman by the elbow. The woman was dressed in a long-sleeved shirt and jeans, her eyes bloodshot and a worn look on her face, as if she’d been crying.

  The man in the sweater stepped back a ways to let the girl through. “I’m not used to this either.”

  “Not used to what?” Hunt said.

  The man with the funny smile nudged the girl forward. “This is what you came for.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “This one here. The girl.” The man put his hand over the girl’s shoulder. The girl shook it away.

  “This is it, this is the exchange.”

  “What do you mean, ‘the girl’?”

  “The girl,” the man that was known to Hunt said flatly. “There were two girls from Ho Chi Minh. But this one got scared. She was suppo
sed to transfer in Vancouver and continue on to Seattle.”

  “What happened to the other girl?”

  “Picked up, I’d guess,” the man with the funny smile said. “Probably passed her drugs a couple hours ago. This one’s ripe to do the same.”

  “How much is she carrying?”

  “One point five kilograms.”

  Hunt did the math in his head. Ninety thousand dollars.

  No one looked at the girl. She stood between the two men; in her hand she carried a small purse that Hunt thought had probably been her carry-on.

  “Can you help her over?” Hunt said, holding out his hand. The girl looked at him and then she looked at the man with the funny smile, and he pushed her over.

  “Careful,” the man with the funny smile said. “You don’t want her to burst.”

  Hunt threw the line back to the two men. The one he didn’t know was already at the controls. The inbound ferry had passed on its return trip to Vancouver, and as the two men started up their engine, Hunt watched the receding lights of the ferry. He hadn’t noticed the low sound of the ferry engines until then, and he sat there in the night and watched the white water come off the back of the other boat and the two men lift up and head into the night.

  After the men were gone, Hunt could hear the small breathing of the woman beside him. In the night her hair appeared to be black, pulled away from her face, with thin baby hairs exposed at her scalp from wearing her hair too tight. Hunt thought her to be twenty, though she could have been thirty; he could never tell with Asians. Skinny, she was flat chested and small as a child.

  “This is what it’s come to,” he said. The girl looked over at him. “You don’t speak any English, do you?”

  “A little.”

  Hunt was surprised; her accent was heavy but the words were understandable. He felt the blood rise in his face. “We didn’t mean to speak about you that way.”

  “I know what I am,” the girl said.

  “Yes,” Hunt said. He looked at his hands just for something to look at. The packet of drugs he had expected to receive from the two men would have been good. Better than good, it would have been all he needed to get away. The men had been right about him: if he messed this up, he would be dead. He was surprised he wasn’t dead already. How long did he expect to keep working this way? How long before he ended up like the kid?

  The girl wasn’t what he had expected. It wasn’t as clear cut as he was used to, it wasn’t clear cut at all, but he thought if Eddie could move the heroin she was carrying in her stomach, there was still hope.

  Before he’d known about the girl, Hunt had planned to take the drugs—drugs that should have been in the bumpers of his boat but were in some girl’s stomach, some girl who spoke and breathed, who had a mind and a stake in the matter. He’d known he would take the drugs from the moment Eddie had told him about the job. From the moment he’d heard about the kid and what had happened—and what he knew would happen to him now.

  That he would be killed was not something he doubted. Maybe not today, but he knew now that it could happen, would happen if he ever found himself in the same position as the kid, locked up, ready to say anything to avoid going back to Monroe.

  To have a choice in the matter was all he really wanted. To know that he had some say, though small, over when he died and in what way gave him a little hope. This girl, he thought, what could he do with her? Though he had killed before, he wasn’t a killer, at least not anymore, not on purpose.

  He needed the heroin she was carrying. Needed it to get free of his life. Because it was not just desperation he felt, but also a strange happiness. The happiness of knowing that he might make it, that at least now he had a chance. The other boat was long gone, disappeared into the night, the men on their way back to whatever hidden slip they worked out of. He showed the girl to a seat and felt the first wave from the inbound ferry hit. It went under the boat, and when he leaned to steady himself he felt the fiberglass dust falling all around him.

  THROUGH THE SCOPE, GRADY WATCHED THE BULLET hit just over Hunt’s head. He saw the black cut of it where it had missed Hunt and gone into the white fiberglass, tinted green by the night vision. He was a half mile off, hidden by the clouded night and the dark water, with only the scope to tell him Hunt existed at all.

  Kill Hunt, he thought.

  What about the girl?

  Gut her.

  Yes.

  He took aim again and fired.

  THE GLASS IN THE COCKPIT SPIDERWEBBED AS ANOTHER bullet hit the boat. Hunt lay facedown on the deck, his hands out in front and his cheek to the cold, wet floor. The girl was down, too, crouched in front of the small cabin doors. He told her to open them. He told her to climb down and not to come back up. The whole time the boat was rocking with the ferry wake.

  Those two bullets had been meant to kill him. Perfect, well-placed head shots, but the unexpected had happened, a slight drift of the boat as the ferry wake had come under it.

  There was a pause, a strange silence, waves running along the hull, the almost imperceptible rocking of the boat as the ocean lifted and then gave it back. Hunt leaned over the edge of the gunwale and looked into the darkness. Nothing moved, and for a second he thought it was all over. He carried the small Browning. It had been there all the time, since he’d returned from the mountains. He held it now and looked in the direction he thought the shots had come from.

  Muzzle fire lit in five short bursts, and by the time he dropped his head, the bullets were already slamming into the side of the boat. Thwok-thwok-thwok, like river stones breaching the water from a high bridge, fast and silent. A couple of rounds missed, just inches over the gunwale, and went whistling off over his starboard side. Hunt heard a boat’s engine start, something powerful, something with some speed behind it. By the time he reached the cockpit, bullets were boiling across the bow of the Bayliner.

  The boat sat there stiff as a corpse on a table, Hunt too scared to rise up and push the throttle forward. With his head ducked, Hunt wedged the muzzle of the Browning into the back pocket of his jeans and grabbed a cotton towel from the side compartment, below the cockpit. He could hear the other boat coming on, the fall and surge of the propeller as it gripped the waves.

  He lit the towel with his lighter and lay blowing the flame as another surge of bullets broke over the boat. Fiberglass dust fell everywhere and bit into Hunt’s lungs. He felt the cockpit glass fall in a thousand little pieces, crystals of it everywhere and all through his hair. He shook to get them off and blew again into the rising flame of the towel. When the fibers caught and he could see the cotton begin to bend and take the flame, he stuffed the unlit end into the spare gas barrel. He rose and threw the barrel over his port side. He heard the splash but did not turn to see if the towel remained lit. A volley of bullets cut across the cockpit.

  A sudden sliver of pain in his calf dropped him to his knees. Something sparked and he could smell the plastic odor of electricity and rubber. He groaned, knew he was hurt, but didn’t have time to care. He took a quick look back over the port side at the floating barrel beside him. It was still lit, flame playing at the opening.

  Fear gave him courage. He reached up to grab the throttle and pushed it forward; the engines surged to life, the boat lifting up out of the water with the speed. Two seconds later, he could see behind him the giant fireball of fuel spreading into the sky and the dark cloud of a gas fire blotting out the moon and stars. The gasoline spread along the water and for a minute he watched the flames and the lick of the smoke as it rose.

  THE EXPLOSION LIT ON THE NIGHT WATER, AND GRADY, who had been moving fast, slowed the boat and raised a hand to shield his eyes. He swore under his breath. “Now what?” he said, looking out on the fire as it rose red, then black into the night, the reflection swept along with the current of the water. The light had fried his retinas, as if he had sat staring into a campfire and then looked away, only to see that night surrounded him, dark and hard as a wall.

>   Grady brought the throttle down and slowed the boat to a near stop. He heard the rush of the flames as they fed on the night air, and the lap of the water against his hull. Nothing else. One of the bullets must have hit the fuel line, perhaps a spark igniting it all? He thought he’d seen Hunt falter a bit, taking a bullet. Grady raised the scope to his eye and looked into the fire, but the light was everywhere and too much for the night vision.

  He eased the throttle forward and circled his boat once through the smoke. Smell of seawater and gasoline, the odor running all through him, over the cockpit and up into his nostrils, where he took it down into his throat and swallowed it whole. No debris. Not one thing. Just a burning lake of flame on the water. He cursed again and raised the scope, running the night vision out onto the surrounding water. A white trail of engine froth a mile off.

  THE DRAW OF HIS WAKE LAY BEHIND HUNT IN A WHITE trail. Depending on how far behind him the other boat was, he knew it would not be difficult to follow him. The gas explosion had only given him time. He opened up the throttle—the engines roaring behind him—and looked on ahead, with the boat bouncing recklessly from port to starboard as it bit into the chop before him. He heard the Vietnamese girl inside the cabin let out a muffled scream. In that moment he didn’t care: they needed to get away and he was trying his best to get them there. The glass that had fallen along the bow now clattered back with the wind and fell all around him. He was standing with his knees bent, taking the chop as it came, trying to anticipate the fall and rise of the water he was running across.

  Behind him the white track of the boat spread out until it was lost in the grays and blacks of the night. The motors blared behind him. The wind came full on through the broken cockpit window and whipped him hard in the face and made his eyes water. He’d dropped the Browning somewhere, and from time to time he felt it skitter along the cockpit floor and hit his foot. When he bent into the wind and turned to look behind him, he could see nothing but the white boat wake and the night stretched out dark as wine on the distant water, a horizon of fire where the gas can had gone up. Even this was fading, as if he were rounding the edge of the earth and it were going up over the curve.