This, however, was over the line. He knew damned well this was just business. Put a bullet in my head and be done with it. But there’s no reason, no excuse really, to lose your temper, and turn sadistic asshole. Unprofessional. Uncool.
“Cover this shit up,” he was saying. “Dump his sorry ass.”
I could see the carpeted room fairly well-Chrissy wasn’t there, just Jerry G and his two bully boys. But on the floor was a canvas tarp, and the black guy reached for it, and that’s what they were going to cover me up with.
But first the black guy swung the walnut-grip butt of his nine millimeter at my head. The angle was weird, and he couldn’t put much swing into it, and in that half-second or so, I figured it probably wouldn’t kill me, but likely would put me to sleep.
It did.
When I came to, I was under the tarp on a metal surface and I could hear a raspy rumble, and feel the lurch and bounce and sway of what I quickly realized was a motorboat cutting through somewhat rough waters.
I got my bearings. I was in the bottom of the boat. My head was toward the stern, where the motor was grinding up foam at a pretty good clip. Twenty miles an hour? I was on my side, so my duct-taped hands were against the deck, which was steel and gently curved, nothing fancy-a jon boat?
I minimized my movement, but the tarp was so heavy, and the boat’s trajectory loping enough, the engine noisy enough, that I figured I needn’t worry too much. The tape looped around my hands put them in a praying position, but I hadn’t stooped to prayer just yet. I still had better options.
And the best one was to find something sharp enough to work at the duct tape. These guys weren’t the brightest, or maybe their boss Jerry G wasn’t, because if they’d used any kind of rope, I really would have been praying-and making every promise to the Man Upstairs you can think of, about my new reformed life. As it was, they’d used duct tape.
And duct tape is designed to tear easily.
“River’s a rough fucker tonight,” a high-pitched, whiny voice said from the bow.
“Pretty, though,” came a more mellow, lower-pitched voice from nearer me, at the stern, working itself above the motor. “Nice clear night, for so choppy.”
This was the black guy, I’d venture. He had a soothing bass, with an Isaac Hayes vibe to it. The asshole at the bow was clearly white, probably the bearded head-butt artist with the beer belly.
“Wish to fuck I’d brought a jacket,” the white guy said.
“You got that right.”
“Is that why the river’s so empty? Too fuckin’ cold?”
“Yeah. Normally, this time of year, even this time of night? You’d have some assholes out drinkin’ and drownin’.”
“There was a few up nearer River Bluff.”
“Yeah. They’ll be more down Ft. Madison way.”
The river seemed to settle down a little. I wished they would start talking again. I’d thought the way my wrists were bound, I might be able to get my fingers down to where I could get enough purchase to do some judicious ripping. But that wasn’t happening. So now I was trying to explore the bottom of the boat, and find something sharp to work the duct tape on.
Two or three minutes went by before the white guy blurted: “Will you look at that full the fuck moon! Not a goddamned cloud in the sky. Look at them fuckin’ stars!..Ever wonder if anybody’s up there lookin’ back down at us?”
“What, like God, you mean?”
“Naw, not Jesus or nobody. I mean, outer-space-type aliens. You know, Star Trek shit. E.T. phone the fuck home?”
The black guy chuckled.“I don’t think so.”
“What, so then, like, we’re all alone down here? Whole great big universal galaxy, and it’s just us idjits? I mean, what are the fuckin’ odds? ”
“Odds, one hunnerd percent.”
“How you figure?”
“One hunnerd percent, fool. Ain’t no aliens on a star.”
“And why is that, smart-ass?”
“Because a star is a gaseous mass.”
The white guy made a farting sound with his lips. “ You’re a gaseous mass.”
“Maybe so. But I ain’t a ignorant redneck gaseous mass.”
That shut the white guy up.
I was enjoying the conversation-not because of its intellectual aspects, or its rustic American humor, but liking that these two stupid sons of bitches were distracting each other, while I was moving my hands down to where the metal hooks for a middle bench would’ve been, had it not been removed so the boat could be used for hauling contraband and dumping bodies and other fun and games.
I damn near laughed-the black guy on a bench at the stern, the bearded idiot on a bench at the bow, and me in the middle again. Didn’t take long at all, and made zero noise (at least any that registered), using the metal edge of that fastener to carve through the duct tape.
The white guy asked, “Where should we dump the cocksucker?”
“Let’s give it another ten miles or so.”
“ Before Ft. Madison, though.”
“Yeah. Before.”
“…You know, my brother’s in there.”
“Huh? Where?”
“Ft. Madison! The pen!”
“What’s he in for?”
“Killed a dude at a register, 7-Eleven.”
“That was stupid.”
“Well, the dude had a gun under there. That’s self-defense!”
The black guy had no comment.
I had removed the duct tape from my mouth, for comfort, not practicality, but had decided that I could not risk undoing the tape locking my ankles-that would likely create obvious movement under the tarp.
“Somethin’ about me,” the white guy was saying, as they spoke across my prone form, “might surprise your black ass.”
“Such as?”
“I like that soul music.”
“You do, huh?”
“I ain’t no redneck. That’s racial. You shouldn’t say that kind of racial shit.”
“Yeah. Sorry. So. What do you listen to? Otis? Wicked Pickett? Aretha maybe?”
“Who? No, no! I like them Blues Brothers.”
“…You gotta be fuckin’ shittin’ me…”
“What?”
“Them pasty white boys can’t sing that shit.”
“Hell they can’t!” Then he started singing “Soul Man,” which I thought was pretty funny, though I didn’t laugh, too busy taking a chance lifting the edge of the tarp near my head just enough to get a fix on where the black guy was…
The black guy, who told the white guy to shut the fuck up-which only made the bastard sing louder, intermingling it with laughter-was wearing gray running shoes. Big ones-size elevens, anyway, with some miles on them. I got a good look, because those stompers were about five inches from the edge of the tarp.
Then the white guy started singing “Rubber Biscuits,” and this the black guy found funny as hell, lightening up, and he was laughing right up until my hands gripped his ankles and brought him sliding down hard onto the floor of the boat, rocking the little craft.
I stood up, like a ghost waking, and flung the tarp off and at the bearded bouncer at the stern, getting a
