Free The Terror of Living by Urban Waite Page B

morning.
        He walked down to the market and sat on a bench looking out on the sound. It was the first time in ten years he'd seen water that big and green. At the ferry terminal he saw a man panhandling for food. He wore a sign saying "Pregnant and Hungry" around his neck and danced and sang a tuneless ditty on a repeating circuit. Drake watched him for a time and then went into McDonald's and bought the man a breakfast sandwich. "Here," Drake said, holding the bag out to the man.
        The man took the bag and looked inside. "Are you trying to kill me?"
        Drake didn't know what to say.
        The man stepped out onto the sidewalk and surprised a woman walking by. "Here," he said. "You take this."
        At the federal building, Drake called up for the DEA agent, but no one had seen him. He waited in the lobby for an hour, spinning his hat on his finger and watching the people as they came through the metal detectors. At noon he walked back to the hotel and went up in the elevator. In the brushed metal doors, Drake caught a woman staring at him. He took off his hat and held it to his chest.
        On the floor of his room there was a note from Sheri written on hotel stationery. He picked it up and read it, then flipped it over and wrote a note and left it for Sheri.
        It took him almost forty minutes with the traffic to drive from downtown Seattle to Emerald Downs, where the horses raced in Auburn. He didn't have any clear idea of what he was doing, but he had to do something.
        The horses weren't running, but when he flashed his star, the guard at the gate let him through, saying, "You get that thing out of a cereal box?"
        Drake walked the edge of the track, leaning on the railings and looking down on the dirt track. The ground was all smooth as if it had been gone over with a rake. One of the groundsmen came over and pointed him toward the stables.
        The stalls were all empty, but Drake found a man hosing down the floors.
        "What day they race around here?"
        The man looked up and took his hand off the spray nozzle.
        "What day they race around here?" Drake asked again.
        "Sundays usually, though every once in a while they'll do a few races during the week."
        "They any good to bet on?"
        "Not if you want to keep your money."
        "Good advice."
        "Been working here almost ten years and it's the best I've got."
        "How many horses come through here?"
        "Two hundred or more on a busy day."
        "You keep them all in here?"
        "We end up bringing them in in shifts. Usually, if they lose, it's a quick turnout anyway."
        The man went back to washing the floors. "You know anyone I can talk to that might know a little something about riding?" Drake asked.
        The man released the spray nozzle again. "What type of riding are you interested in?"
        "Jumps and that sort of thing. Obstacles."
        "Best I can think of," the man said, "is this place around here. A few of the owners board horses there. It's a small operation, but they're good, decent people. They have a little run on the property and they can tell you a little more than I'd be able to."
        He followed the directions the man gave him, drove the few miles up the highway, and turned off at the next exit. It wasn't the prettiest piece of land he'd seen, but it wasn't the worst either. Freight tracks ran parallel to the highway, and where the road crossed, the rains had taken old newspapers and plastered them to the ground. There were cigarette butts, old soft-drink cups, all of it flung to the side when the gates lowered and the trains came through.
        He drove a few miles in, passing a scrapyard and a long expanse of pasture where he could see cows grazing. Where the houses sat, he could see stands of ash and alder and a few bent pines. In the distance a hill rose, and beyond it, he thought, must be the freeway