The Boat: Part Eight

~ beetleypete

This is the eighth part of a fiction serial, in 806 words.

After struggling through the traffic around New York City, Ricky was starting to tremble. He needed food, and somewhere to rest. And there were phone calls to make, both to Connie, and Cisco. He dreaded having to call home, but it had to be done. Around four hours away from his destination, he pulled into a service area south of Yonkers, feeling relieved as he swtched off the engine.

Splashing water over his head in the bathroom didn’t work. The food had helped, along with a lot of coffee. But he had to give in to the fatigue, which meant waiting until the next day to continue to Saratoga Springs, or arriving when it was pitch dark. Even a grass-cutter from Florida knew that wouldn’t be a good idea. He decided to stay put, and carried the two bottles of water he had bought back to the parking lot.

With the pickup and trailer concealed at the very back of the lot close to some trees, he clambered into the boat and opened the door to the small cabin at the front. It was a cramped space, but offered more room than the cab of his pickup. There was a pile of waterproof sheeting and some coiled rope inside, so he made a bed of sorts to lie down on. Once he was feeling more relaxed, he called Connie.

She listened for a while, saying nothing. Ricky knew that didn’t bode well. Once he had run out of half-truths to tell her, she let him have it.

“What do you mean, Cisco had an accident? The window smashed and he got cut? How bad can that be? You could have got some band-aids and patched him up. How come he gets to relax in a motel while you have to finish the job delivering the boat? For god’s sake, Ricky, what kind of man are you? You should have stood up to that Mex sonofabitch. Now you don’t know when you will be home, and if you miss me having this baby I can tell you now that you better not bother coming back”.

Nothing he could say would calm her down, so he tried to boast about the money. He had finally counted out the cash from the roll Cisco had given him at the motel, and it was more than three thousand dollars. That had told him two things. Cisco was lying about how much the boat was worth to the mafia guys, as he would never have taken the job for a couple of grand like he had implied. It also meant that the five hundred he had been promised was small change, if Cis was already carrying so much on the trip.

“Listen, Connie. I already have like three grand, and there could be lots more to come. We need that money for the baby, for doctor bills, for everything extra. Just let me finish the job and we can put all this behind us when I get home. I will tell Cisco that I am done. I did what he asked, but no more, no other favours”.

She hung up.

Next, he dialled Cisco’s cellphone. It rang and rang with no answer. There was no message to listen to or leave a reply to, so he couldn’t even tell Cis where he was and that he would be delivering the boat tomorrow. He guessed the Mexican was sleeping off the bullet wound, and decided to try again once he got some rest.

Despite all the tiredness, the stress of the situation made sleep hard to come by. He just kept going over and over everything in his mind, scarcely able to believe that he was lying there in the cabin of a stolen boat, carrying a gun in his pants waistband, and soon to head north to meet up with some serious gangster. The hot tiring job of cutting grass in Florida seemed like a distant memory, a former life. Can it only have been a couple of days ago?

It must have been the squeak of the brakes that woke him. It felt early, but there was light around the badly-fitting door frame. Coming to his senses, he could hear an engine idling. There was a car next to the pickup, he was sure of that. Then the sound of a car door closing. Not slammed, but closed quietly. There was no good reason for anyone to park so far away from the service area, and right next to his pickup where there were at least a dozen spaces either side.

Moments later, he felt movement as someone climbed onto the boat. That made the hair stand up on his arms as he reached down for the heavy pistol.

The scrape of a footstep near the door made him instinctively point the gun.

41 thoughts on “The Boat: Part Eight”

  5. Ooh, it’s getting good now. Not quite the same as cutting some lawns. I wouldn’t put it past you to have Cisco get an infection and die in the meantime.

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  9. (1) Yonkers? That’s completely bonkers!
    (2) “Splashing water over his head in the bathroom didn’t work.” Of course not! He should splash water ON his head, not over it! I bet the bathroom walls are dripping wet!
    (3) Florida grass-cutters should stay away from the Everglades. Leave the “river of grass” alone!
    (4) Ricky told Connie a bunch of half-truths. Sounds bad, but all Connie had to do was connect enough half-truths together to make some full-truths, and then discard the rest.
    (5) Connie gave Ricky a piece of her mind. I hope it’s not the piece that is home to maternal instincts.
    (6) Liberace was once offered a grand piano. He turned down the offer. “I already have three grand.”
    (7) Cisco may be sleeping off the bullet wound, but I have a feeling that’s because the Grim Reaper sang him a lullaby.
    (8) It might have been the squeak of the brakes that woke Ricky up, but it could also have been a commanding voice. “Search the boat, Sharkey! If you find someone hiding in there, throw him overboard so that I can plug him with a hundred bullets!”

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