The Terror of Living by Urban Waite Read Free Book Online Page A

were, wearing that hat and riding like you do. It was an aerial drop twenty miles this side of the border. Unless you're out there taking Polaroids and tacking them up to the trees, you should be fine."
        "There's going to be a lot of pissed-off people when you don't deliver," Hunt said.
        "You let me worry about that."
        "Eddie, I'm not trying to be difficult about this, but the kid knows who I am and it's not going to take him long to figure out he's got chips on the table."
        "We all have chips on the table," Eddie said, taking a draw from his coffee.
        
        
        THE HEAD DEA AGENT, DRISCOLL, SAT TAPPING HIS card on the metal table, tapping lengthwise, then turning the card and tapping it again. He'd been doing it at a near-steady pace for more than an hour. When Drake came in, it was the second time they'd met that day. Just the two of them in the room, Driscoll with his jacket off and tie loosened, sitting there with a stack of paper laid out before him. A man with the posture and thick cut of an athlete, now slumping into his later years, the agent ran a hand through his mustache and off his chin, then leaned back in the chair and looked up. To Drake the motion seemed practiced, almost polite, like the gesture of a lion with a kind of social conscience, cleaning blood from its fur, readying itself for the next kill. "I've just finished looking through your report," he said after Drake had taken a seat in the chair across the table from the agent. "There isn't anything in here about you braining the kid with the dull end of your rifle."
        Drake didn't say anything. The card kept tapping on the table, steady as a metronome. Driscoll's eyes on him, a small, sickly smile lingering at his lips.
        "Kids can make up the damnedest stories," Drake said.
        "Yes, they clan," the agent said, giving the card a final tap on the table, then slipping it across to Drake. They were in the federal building in downtown Seattle. From the freeway, Drake had seen the covered bridge, seven stories up, where the prisoners crossed from cell to courthouse without touching the street or coming into contact with the civilized world. "Is there anything you'd like to add?"
        "I wrote it all down as it happened."
        Driscoll looked away, and when he looked back he said, "Deputy Drake, the truth is that the paper is going to be running a story on this tomorrow."
        "A story on what?"
        "Wasn't there a Sheriff Drake up in Silver Lake convicted of smuggling?"
        Drake didn't say anything.
        Driscoll leaned forward in his chair and looked across the table at Drake. "I can't guarantee they're going to keep something like that out of the article."
        "My father?"
        "I don't know how they heard about all this, but I got them to hold off on running it at least for a day."
        "Thanks," Drake said. "What does this mean now?"
        "It means you better start answering questions."
        "That was ten years ago. What does the past have to do with any of this?"
        "Some would say the past has everything to do with what happens today," Driscoll said. "What do you think?"
        Drake put his hands up on the table and spread his fingers. Flat, cold, metal. He could feel something inside him working loose. Shame? Fear? He didn't know. He wanted to get up, wanted to leave, but there was nowhere he could go. He'd got himself into this mess, and every way he looked at it he couldn't get himself out.
        "You the son who used to play Division One?"
        "The paper tell you that when they called?"
        "That's what I heard."
        "Had to move back after my father went away."
        "What did you play?"
        "Point guard."
        "You were supposed to be some big star, weren't you?"
        "Basketball and my father were almost ten years ago."
        "And now you're a deputy up there? Would have thought you'd be