By full daylight the vehicle remained at the cold store, and I had nothing useful to bring Leon except urgency. I needed money for another vehicle if my pickup failed, and someplace to put two frightened people if we got them out. At the landing, my small boat rode against worn tires, looking better than anything else I owned. I had used it for paid odd jobs and imagined using it after men like Mercer were finished with me. I went to find a buyer.
The boatyard owner was opening his shed. He looked at my wet trousers and the cloth around my hand before looking at the boat. 'You selling trouble with it?' he asked. 'Just the boat.' He walked its length, lifted the seat, and studied the engine housing. Every minute he spent considering made me want to drag him aboard. I had left the cold store without knowing what the waiting vehicle meant. A man in a hurry should never sell anything, but I was selling the only thing I could.
His offer would not have bought the engine a year earlier. I named a higher price. He shook his head and began putting away his tools. I followed him into the shed, then stopped. My whole working life had trained me to bargain hardest when I felt cornered. Daniel could not spend the money I hoped to get. I accepted the offer. The owner counted bills on his workbench while I signed the papers, holding the page still with the heel of my bandaged hand.
I took my tackle box off the boat and left the spare fuel can aboard. It was a small surrender, almost ridiculous beside the rest, but I stood looking at it until the buyer asked whether we were finished. I said we were. Carrying the box toward the parking area, I saw Mercer beside my pickup. He wore a clean short-sleeved shirt and had one hand resting on my open window. No Sutter stood beside him. Mercer had come to look reasonable.
'You could have asked me for money,' he said. I set the tackle box down. 'Where's Daniel?' He glanced toward the buyer, who had found work well out of hearing. 'Bring Leon to talk. Then your boy goes home.' I asked about Ruth. Mercer rubbed a spot from the truck door with his thumb. 'Don't take on every problem in town.' I felt the boat money inside my pocket, damp from my hand. He had answered enough, though not the way I wanted.
'Leon comes knowing what he's walking into,' I said. Mercer shook his head. 'He won't come that way.' A gull dropped onto a piling behind him and screamed. Neither of us moved. I had brought Daniel into this because I had believed my word could make another man's arrangement safe. Mercer was offering me the same work again with a different passenger. For one weak second I pictured Daniel stepping out of a doorway while Leon disappeared through it. Then I pictured explaining that trade to Daniel.
'No,' I said. Mercer lifted his hand from the window. 'You don't have much left to refuse with.' He looked at the tackle box, then the empty slip beyond me. I could not tell whether he had followed me there or simply knew where a broke man would go. I told him I would not deliver Leon blind. Mercer walked away without raising his voice. At his car he turned. 'Then don't say I never gave you a way.' I let him leave.
I drove to Leon's yard and made myself stop at the gate instead of barging in. The worker I had helped waved me through after a look at my shoulder. Leon met me beside a stack of weathered pallets. I told him I had heard both captives, described the vehicle, and admitted I had been seen. He asked why I had not come sooner. 'I went looking for somebody bigger than me,' I said. 'Find him?' 'No.' He let the answer stand without making me explain Angola.
I put the boat money on a pallet between us. Wind lifted one bill, and Leon caught it before it fell. 'What's this buying?' he asked. 'Transportation. A room. Your time if that's what it takes.' He pushed the money back. I told him about Mercer's bargain. His face hardened, but he did not step away. 'And you came here anyway.' I said yes. He looked beyond me toward his men, working in the ordinary daylight I had almost forgotten existed.
Leon wanted me back at the road to watch while he arranged a vehicle and somebody to cover his absence. I wanted him beside me immediately. We argued until he asked whether I preferred to arrive together and leave nobody able to help. I put the bills away and agreed to wait where he could find my pickup. Before I turned, he caught my good sleeve. Daniel was not the whole bargain. Leon agreed to help only if Ruth came out too.