by Urban Waite
"Not much. Not enough to warrant all this. A little shy of a hundred thousand, maybe?"
"How much do you think they're paying that assassin to go around doing what he's been doing?"
"More than that."
"Doesn't make sense, does it?"
"Nothing makes sense when pellets of heroin are involved."
"What will happen to Thu?" Nancy asked.
"I don't know what the situation is. She'll most likely be deported. But we'll need to talk to her first."
HUNT SAT ON THE SIDE OF A BACK ROAD. THE MORNING sun warmed his face, and in the field before him the three horses grazed, dipping their necks like oil pistons and tearing at the grass. He could hear their teeth working. He was going after
Nora, but first he had to do something about the horses. He couldn't go around with a trailer attached to the hitch of the truck, and he didn't even know if he'd be coming back. He thought he might be dead, and that was no way to leave the horses, like he'd left the others, just sitting there out behind his house to be used for target practice.
Someone owned this patch of field, but he couldn't tell who. The field was on the eastern slope of the Cascades, where the rain would not come and there would be just a few days of protection from the coming snows. The field shone yellow under the sun, the grass already turning with the oncoming winter, all around the perimeter a band of tall fir. At the far end of the field he could see how the forest began, a rise in the earth that seemed to continue into the high peaks. The fence that had once surrounded the patch of land had wilted into the dirt, the wood covered in patches of green cattail moss.
He sat with his legs pushed out in front of him in the grass and his arms held back for support. He had no idea what to do. Leaving Nora wasn't an option.
Ninety thousand wasn't a lot of money to run on; it wasn't anything. He was fifty-four years old. Old enough to know he wasn't going to run. Nora had told him to. But he couldn't, not now, not like this.
He limped out into the field. The horses were staked to the ground and held on ten-foot ropes. They watched him come, ambivalent, their teeth grinding. In the right circles, they were worth about forty thousand each. He went to the big spotted Appaloosa and combed her mane with his fingers. He began to speak to the horse as if he were making confession.
He talked first of the man in the bait shop, the man he'd shot with a spray of buckshot. The man was old, losing his vision. Hunt told the Appaloosa about the old man, how he lived above the store, how he'd heard Hunt down there. It hadn't taken long for him to come down those steps, Hunt standing there, the man carrying the gun with him down the stairs, holding it on Hunt, Hunt sidestepping and grabbing for the weapon. The discharge of the gun. Hunt hadn't meant to do it, the gun going off, buckshot at point-blank range.
All this he told to the horse, the big Appaloosa pulling at the grass, tearing it up, and moving it off the ground in a sideways motion. The wet sopping sound of the man's lungs, the old bagpipes, the blood at his lips. One of the old man's eyes was shot out and the blood flowed from it like tear tracks on the man's face. Hunt couldn't move, his ears ringing, the power of the shotgun still vibrating in his muscles. The man leveled out there on the floor of his shop. Hunt should have run, should have gotten the hell out of there.
Hunt shuddered, his hand up over the neck of the Appaloosa. Like the two he'd lost in the mountains, he'd raised her from a foal, bringing her up in his own paddock, feeding her, giving her love and time to become the horse she was now. He stroked her mane, his fingers digging deep beneath the hair. "I'm sorry," he said, his face pressed into her neck and the words suffocated in her skin. He didn't know what would happen now. He didn't know what would happen to any of them.
THE GIRL FROM THE COFFEE SHACK CALLED IN THE afternoon. Drake could hear the dull sound of the espresso machine, the brush of her cheek and hair against the receiver. He pictured her there in the little shack, the police tape pulled across the motel and the whole thing moving in the wind, stink currant and willow, yellow tape. After their introductions, he asked about the night.
"One strange thing," she said. "A man parked in the lot here and sat in his car. He sat for a long time."
"How long did he sit there?"
"Nearly thirty minutes, it was past the time I usually close."
"Did he buy coffee?"
"That's why I stayed open. I thought maybe it was one of the owner's boyfriends come by to check up on me. It was near dark by the time he walked over."
"Did you ask him what he had been doing that whole time?"
"No. I was uncomfortable."
"Why?"
The girl didn't say anything.
"Didn't you want to know?"
"It looked like he was jerking off," she said after a while. "It freaked me out."
"In the car?"
"Yes, for thirty minutes."
"Did he say anything to you after he came to the window?"
"He wanted to talk about when it would get dark."
"What did you tell him?"
"I told him it already was. But he wanted to know if it got pitch black."
"What was your impression of him?"
"He made me feel strange, he didn't seem right. Very pale skin, irritated around the eyes. He had what looked like a bruise near his hairline."
The man didn't sound anything like Hunt. "He was a little rough?"
"He was nice enough. He gave me some advice."
"What did he say?"
"He said I should be careful about the city. He said it was nothing like this coffee shack."
"I don't know why you didn't call the sheriff right then." Drake attempted a joke.
The girl laughed but he could tell it was only to be polite. "To tell you the truth, he frightened me a little," the girl said. "I'm a little scared now. Just jumpy."
"I don't know if this is the guy we're looking for. I doubt it. You shouldn't need to worry, there's no reason he should come back there."
"I don't know," the girl said. "His car is still in the lot. I don't know why he wouldn't come back for it."
He'd forgotten about the assassin's car. Hadn't even thought of it. He knew it now. Four vehicles had come to the motel, but only two had left. He'd figured Hunt for taking the Lincoln after ditching the hatchback. The killer back in his own car. "Can you read me the plate?"
He listened to her voice. He could tell she was leaning over the counter, her diaphragm compressing and the airiness coming into her voice. Drake had probably walked right past it.
He gave the girl the local sheriff's number. "Don't worry," Drake said. "Just procedure." Drake asked her to call the sheriff for a look at the car. "Tell him exactly what you just told me." He thanked her and then hung up.
GRADY LED NORA IN THROUGH THE BACK AND TOLD her to sit. She looked around for something to sit on but didn't find anything. They were in the basement, and when she didn't sit immediately, he gave her a hard stare till she sat on the floor. There was cold cement all the way back to the water heater, windows covered over with white paint. A dull, claylike glow leaked in through the windows, raindrops and dirt spattering the panes. In the corner, a large standing freezer hummed. There were several workbenches, and a stainless steel prep table by the back door.
He left his bag on one of the benches, walked over to the freezer, and opened it. He pushed a human leg aside and dug out the heroin, frozen through and covered with a thin pink hue. The freezer smelled sour. Though he'd washed everything down and bleached it as best he could, the freezer smelled of stomach acid and human excrement mixed together with all the things the girl had been carrying around inside her. He closed the door and looked back at Nora. She hadn't moved.
Upstairs they heard the front door creak open, the weight of footsteps on the wooden boards above.
Grady looked up. "Don't worry," he said.
He crossed the floor with the heroin and deposited it in his knife bag. From the bag he took out the.22 and stuffed it in his p
ants, then the twelve-inch chef's knife, which he placed on the table, the edge of the metal singing in the empty basement.
"You're in good hands," he finished, not looking at Nora but at the windows running the length of the basement wall.
The basement was dug eight feet into the ground, and the only things discernible through the windows were the shapes of grass tufts where they pressed against the panes. Rain pattered on the drive, droplets clinging to the outside of the painted glass. Grady could feel an old, familiar urge flood his insides, like the devil pouring kerosene, thick and heavy, down his throat. A shadow passed across the window nearest the street and then, a second later, a window near the basement door.
HUNT LEFT THE THREE HORSES IN THE FIELD. HE staked them and gave them thirty feet of cord, enough to get beneath the shade of the tall fir trees. The field was not too far off, but remote enough that no one would find the horses for a day or two.
The trailer he hid up an old forestry road. He left it a quarter mile off the field, and when he returned to the back road, he could see that the tree trunks covered the silver trailer just as if it were a boulder in the forest. Down the road he filled a large bucket of water from a moss-covered stream. Once the bucket was filled he cupped his hands and brought the water to his face. He removed his wallet and keys from his pockets and laid them beside him. The address he'd taken from Thus purse he kept weighted under his keys.
He was hungry, he felt it now, and he let the water run down his cheeks and roll from his chin, the cold of it settling into him. When he had done this several times, he ran the water through his hair and combed it back with his fingers. From the car he got the small survival bag and laid it near the stream. He checked the bandage. Nancy had done a good job, sewing the wound closed on both sides of his calf, and he could see how the scar would be in the pattern of a star, the skin already starting to conceal the wound. He used the water to rinse; then with the hydrogen peroxide and the iodine he cleaned the cut and let it air-dry for a moment before he put on a fresh bandage and wrapped the whole thing once again.
When he finished washing, he collected his wallet and keys from the grass and put them into his pockets. He still wore the same clothes he had left the marina in, jeans cut off on one side and his white tennis shoes, one the vermilion color of his dried blood and the other stained dark as mud. Hunt picked up the Seattle address he'd taken from Thu and held it between his fingers, a subtle breeze working across his wet skin. Grady had guaranteed Hunt would die. It was the only thing Hunt was sure of. There was nothing left for him to lose. He looked at the address again, knowing he needed help and hoping he would find it there.
He brought the bucket to the field and placed it between the three horses. It was not big enough for the three of them to drink from at the same time, but he hoped it would last through the night. The big Appaloosa came to him and drank from the bucket. He gave her his hand and she nuzzled in search of a carrot. "All right then," he said, and let the horse run her mouth along the knuckles of his hand. He could smell the dust rise from where her hooves met the earth. "All right then," he said again, and limped back to the truck and pulled himself into the high cab.
On the seat beside him was the orange survival bag. He turned the engine over and felt the big diesel rattle and the truck come to life. From the bag he took the Browning, pulled the slide back, and saw the round already loaded. He unfastened the magazine and let it fall into his palm, shucked the bullet from the slide, and loaded it into the clip, then clapped it back together. He checked the safety, and when he was done, he slid the gun beneath his seat.
The fifty capsules of heroin were still inside the plastic grocery bag, the smell coming off it slightly fecal. He opened the passenger window and then his own, feeling the truck beneath him, his hands on the steering wheel, the roll of the engine down along his knuckles and into his arms. He pulled away from the field and went down the dirt road. When he came to the cement, he turned south and kept driving.
NORA SAT ON THE CEMENT FLOOR AND FOLLOWED the overhead creak of footsteps with her eyes.
Across the room, Grady crouched down by the door and waited, holding the chef's knife in one hand and Eddie's silenced.22 in the other. He raised a single finger to his lips. Outside, there was the crunch of gravel beyond the basement door. The handle rattled for a moment and then there was the soft cracking of glass. An elbow came through one of the four painted panes of the door, the only sound that of the glass falling to the cement floor.
A hand reached through and twisted the lock. With the knife still held in a tight grip, Grady made a signal for Nora to stay seated. The door swung open, and a Vietnamese man carrying a small submachine gun stepped through. Grady waited. The door swung into the basement, the man on one side, Grady on the other.
Immediately the man's eyes focused on Nora, sitting there on the cement. Behind her, in the middle of the basement, wooden stairs led up to the main floor of the house. He swept the basement with his eyes - a stainless metal table, several workbenches, and from the darkness across the basement floor the dim hum of the freezer's motor. On one of the benches he saw the knife bag, open at the rim, pellets of heroin and the stock of the AR-15 exposed. He took a step forward, hand held out toward the gun. Nora closed her eyes.
Blood exploded like rough paint from the pea-size hole in the man's head. The man fell to the floor with a clatter of gun and bone matter, a dark pool growing around him. Grady lowered the.22 and kicked the man's legs out of the way before closing the door. He put the.22 into his pants pocket and passed Nora at a near run. He didn't stop when he reached the stairs, just kept going. The sound of his breathing on the dark basement steps above her, Nora crawled to a space behind the wooden stairs. She got in under the shadows and stayed hidden. The dead man was between her and the door. She was scared, fear loaded so tight in her veins she couldn't move. Her eyes hadn't left the dead man on the floor, the seep of blood and brain on the cement.
At the top of the stairs, Grady cracked the door and looked out into his kitchen. He could hear whispering, but he couldn't tell from which direction it came. He rose and opened the door wide enough to pass through, that urge already working away inside him, floodgates open, devil riding down on a cascade of blood and fire.
He found the first man pressed just inside the kitchen doorway. Without even a word, Grady slid the twelve-inch blade across his throat and severed the man's neck nearly to the spine. Blood in glossy strands, from wall to doorframe, like red waxen candle drippings. Grady caught the body and eased it to the floor. The weight of the man's blood on Grady's shirt, pleasure, wet and warm, on Grady's skin.
In the front room, he saw the door hung open and a shadow waiting on the porch. The cheap metal screen door rested against the wood frame. Grady charged it, and the door swung open with his weight and pinned the man on the porch to the side of the house. Grady stabbed him so hard the knife went all the way through the mesh screen of the door, through skin and skull, out the other side, and nailed the man's head to the wood siding of the house. Pressurized blood welled from the man's head and ran through the mesh screen door.
Grady was struggling to take the knife handle back when the first bullets hit the porch. Grady dropped. Broken bits of wood and potting soil rained down on him. The windows behind him exploded and fell back into the house. From what he could hear, there were two guns on him from the street. With the rain falling, nothing was clear; in the dull, clouded light he could see nothing but dark gray shapes moving in the rain, and the muzzle flash of automatic weapons. He dove back through the doorway and into the house.
A step before he made it to the basement door, he was shot back- to-front through the flesh of his side. Blood, soft and warm on his skin. He opened the basement door and fell through.
HUNT STOPPED ONCE FOR GAS, PAID CASH, AND WAS careful not to show his bullet-torn left leg. He bought a bag of peanuts, a large hot dog roasted over an electric spit, and a two-liter bottle of Cherry Coke. While h
e drove, he drank the soda with one hand, holding the bottle between his thighs when he wanted to take the cap off and then again when the cap needed refastening.
He drove with caution, keeping his truck below the speed limit. He knew he was close to the end; one way or another, it would all be finished soon. There were people out there looking for him. He'd read about the deputy, Drake, trying to track him down. Hunt had known his father, the same age as Hunt. They'd shared a beer once, the sheriff and Hunt, just a friendly meeting, the two of them in the same business, working the same range. It was easy for Hunt to see that the man meant to run him off, and Hunt had told him it would be just as easy for him to do the same.
Still, Hunt had felt bad for the man, his son in school, wife passed away, medical bills and a son two thousand miles away to worry over. Hunt could understand a thing like that. He knew they'd had it hard. Even after he'd heard about the sheriff going away on a smuggling charge, he knew his son would never know the truth of it-that his father had been doing it for him, that in some bemused, half-conscious way his father had seen it as the only way out.
They had met an hour's drive outside Silver Lake, at an empty roadside bar where the two of them could be fairly certain they wouldn't see anyone they knew. Still they had used caution, sitting toward the back at a corner table, Hunt's cigarettes laid out on the wood, two beers beaded with sweat between them. The sheriff had explained about his past, about his wife and son. He didn't want to do the things he did, but he was doing them. Hunt said it was the same for him. Said he was just the same as the sheriff. The sheriff looked him over, waiting to see if Hunt would smile, if he was making fun, but then when Hunt didn't, he said, "I should run you off."
"You could do that."
"It's what I'm paid to do."
Hunt looked down at the beer on the table. He touched his palm to the glass and felt the cold bead of the water. "If I said something -"