Alan Baxter - The Gulp - Five Tales of Horror

“Yes, sir. They must have known and followed me. About halfway to Enden they ran around me in their boat and held me up. With a fucking shotgun! Two of ’em and one yelled, ‘Give me the fucken shipment!’ They knew what I had.”

“So you gave it to them?”

“Yeah, they were gonna shoot me, Mr Carter. They both wore balaclavas, but they were white, I saw their hands and eyes. Both men, I guess about middle-age, the guy with the gun had a beer gut, the boat driver was kinda skinny. It was a plain white boat, no name or numbers, with a Yamaha outboard.”

Carter drew a long breath in through his nose, lips pursed. He wore jeans and a collared shirt, his black hair slicked back like always. His cold blue eyes were hard, unblinking. He sipped beer. “You gave it to them,” he said again.

“Y-yes.”

“You really think they’d have shot you?”

Dace hadn’t considered this angle. “I do, yeah. I mean, out there, middle of nowhere. They could have killed me, sunk your boat, nothing would ever be found, right?”

“You’ve been thinking about this, have you?”

“Thought about nothing else all the way here. I’m really sorry, Mr Carter, I don’t know what to say. What to do. I want to make this right.”

“Who was with you?”

Dace paused, licked his lips. He took a sip of beer to buy himself another moment. Carter would know if he lied. Carter always knew. “Sasha. Just this chick I was planning to… you know. I invited her to a gig in Enden tonight. Once the delivery was made, we were going to see Blind Eye Moon, head back home afterwards.”

“You made it easy for them.”

Dace’s heart raced. “What?”

“Distracted by a fucking woman!” Carter yelled, and Dace flinched back.

“I wasn’t distracted! I–”

“They snuck up on you, don’t lie to me, shitcunt. If you’d been on your own, actually motoring towards Enden, and they tried to run you down, you could have run. You could have tried to not get caught. But they sailed right up and caught you without even fucking trying!”

How did he know this stuff? “Mr Carter, I–”

Carter held up one forefinger and it silenced Dace immediately. “What’s done is done, Dace. You’re a fucking idiot, but what’s done is done.”

Dace took a long breath, nodded, lips pressed together. He knew when to hold his tongue.

“A long time you’ve been with me, eh?”

“Yes, Mr Carter.”

“So I’m going to be generous.”

Relief began to seep through Dace. He nodded. “Thank you.”

“That shipment was worth, give or take, about eighty grand on the street. My contact paid me a flat sixty for it. So here’s my generous offer. You have forty-eight hours to pay me back the sixty grand I will have to return to my buyer.”

Dace’s stomach turned to ice. “Sixty grand?”

“I will also have to smooth things over with the buyer, all that extra hassle. But like I said, we go back, you and I. So I’m generously only holding you accountable for the actual monetary loss.”

“Mr Carter, I don’t have sixty grand!”

Carter’s eyes didn’t soften at all. He sipped beer again. “Isn’t that unfortunate. You were going to earn five hundred bucks for tonight’s delivery, so let’s say you owe me fifty-nine thousand five hundred.”

“I don’t have it! I have, like, eight hundred bucks in the bank. My rent is due on Monday.”

Carter smiled, lifted his shoulders. “How is any of that my concern?” He walked past Dace and took the half-finished beer from his hand, stood both bottles on the counter where Chrissy had been sitting. Then he carried on, towards the front door.

“Mr Carter, please. I just don’t have that kind of money.”

Carter opened the front door, then looked at his watch. It was gold, with diamonds around the face that glittered in the soft light of the hallway. Dace thought that watch alone was probably worth sixty grand.

“It’s just before nine,” Carter said. “You have until 9pm Sunday night to bring me my money.”

Dace stared. Carter smiled, like he didn’t have a care in the world. Dace wanted to ask what would happen if he didn’t make the deadline, but he knew already. People often went missing around The Gulp, and often the gossip led back to Carter. Maybe he could just run away.

“I would remind you,” Carter said amiably, “that I know your parents well, and where they live on the north side of town. And your sister visits often, even though she lives in Sydney now. Something to keep in mind.”

If you run, I’ll kill your family. The message was clear. Dace nodded. Carter gestured out the door. Dace left. The door clicked shut behind him and Dace’s body was wracked with tremors. Holding back tears of panic, he went to his car and drove slowly away. Sixty grand in forty-eight hours? How the hell was he supposed to manage that?

As he drove, he went through a mental check list of everyone he knew and how much money they had. His parents were okay, but retired now. They had a pension, but nothing much in savings. His sister worked for a media company in Sydney, and no doubt had money put away, but probably not much. And there was no way she’d give it to him anyway. They were civil these days, but after a falling out in their early twenties, they were distant. Maybe if it really came down to the wire, he could ask, but he doubted she had anything like sixty grand in savings. Every other friend he could think of was like him. Scraping by or on some kind of benefits. After all, sixty grand was the kind of money that could get a person out of The Gulp, so why would anyone still here have that kind of cash?

His mind switched gears. Where could he steal that sort of money? Hold up the drive-through bottle shop around the back of Clooney’s? Well, no, that would be mental. For one, they probably had nothing like that much to hand. For two, it was part of Clooney’s and the pub belonged to Chrissy, which meant it was really Carter’s. That whole daughter-lover thing they had going on was creepy as fuck, but everyone ignored it or gossiped about it privately. Either way, it meant he’d be stealing from Carter.

He drove back into town, heading towards the harbour. Nine o’clock on Friday night. Being part of Carter’s retinue meant he usually drank at Clooney’s, but he knew a couple of mates were planning to go to The Vic this weekend. Maybe he should drop into The Gulp’s other pub and talk to them. His head was spinning and he needed help. Just someone to talk it out with.

He parked by the Victorian Hotel, sat in the car gathering himself for a moment, then headed in. It was heaving, music on the jukebox blaring, people talking and laughing. He saw Justin and Ahmed right away, beers in hand chatting to each other. He got himself a cold one and went over to them.

“I thought you were going to a gig in Enden,” Ahmed said as all three clinked glasses in greeting.

“Yeah, kinda fell through.”

They made small talk for a while, Dace’s mind spinning with disconnected thoughts. If he could raise sixty grand in two days, he’d have done it before, that much was obvious. So the only way to do it was to take risks he would never have entertained before. But what risks?

“Hey guys, answer me a riddle,” he said when their conversation lulled. “Say you need a lot of money in a very short time. How would get it?”

Justin and Ahmed both narrowed their eyes.

“In trouble with the boss?” Justin asked.

They both knew he worked for Carter. They both knew Carter’s reputation. Everyone in The Gulp did. They also stayed well clear of the man. Justin worked in his dad’s accountants office and Ahmed was a mechanic. “Nah, just a hypothetical,” Dace said.