The Terror of Living (12 page)

    THE LAWYER HAD GIVEN GRADY THE TIME AND LOCATION of the meet. He had only a set of coordinates and a GPS. Grady checked the GPS. The wind came bristling over the cockpit and pulled his hair back, his skin red and irritated with the speed. All around he heard the clap of the water underneath the hull. He was doing about thirty-five knots, white water leading off in a trail behind him.

    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 supposed 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.