The Cormorant

by Chuck Wendig

  “So, she would go there every morning, eat bread, drink coffee. She would do this before he woke up and wanted whatever it was he wanted from her – her pussy, her mouth, to hit her, to make her clean the floors or make the bed. This moment, very important to her, very precious. But one day a gull show up. A gull – a bird. Big, gray thing. Patchy feathers, almost like it’s got a sickness.” He pronounces it seek-knees. “The gull show up and swoop down and steal her bread.”

  He puts his massive hands on Miriam’s shoulders. Gently presses down – a casual reminder that he doesn’t have to expend much effort to hold her to this spot.

  “This go on again and again. Gull show up. Steal her bread. She try to hide. Try to shield the bread. The bird waits till she brings it out to dip it – still gets the bread! Few times bird doesn’t get the bread, bird shits in her coffee. Worst of all, the gull now has friends. Other gulls come, think my mother is weak. Think the sight of her means a free meal.

  “Now, you say the same thing I say, I say, Maman, go inside! Eat the bread inside and then go to the balcony. But my mother, she say no. She has this one thing, and she wants to keep it. So what does she do?

  “One day she set the coffee on the ground and take the warm bread and break it. Fan the smell upward with her hand. She keep the bread held low. Down by her waist. The bird show up to steal his bread with his ugly rat-bird friends and she snatch him out of the air!” He makes a fast swoop of his hand and a fist. “And now she got him. And in front of the other gulls, she break the bird like she break the bread. She snap its wings one after the next. Then she take its feet in her fist and she gives a twist – they pop right off the bird, her hand wet with its blood. Last thing she do? As the bird is squirming, going flop flop flop, she take its head to the balcony edge. She place the beak on the iron railing. Then she slam her hand down on it like she trying to open a bottle of Prestige beer. The beak? Shattered.”

  “You seem to think–”

  “Ah ah ah.” He silences her. “That is how you teach a lesson to those who steal from you, Miss Black. It show them a lesson. And it show the other thieves what will happen to them if they try. The gull in her hand did not die. Not then. She did not kill it. The bird, he roll around on the balcony until soon he push his way through the iron bars and fall to the ground below. Then he died. Mister Gull kill himself. Kill himself from the shame of what had been done to him.”

  “I didn’t steal anything from you–”

  “You stole our drugs.”

  “I didn’t – I didn’t! The thing with the meth wasn’t me–”

  “Hey, Jay-Jay,” Tap-Tap says to the one she thinks of as Daddy Long-Legs. The white trash tweaker. “She says meth? Why we talk about meth?”

  Jay-Jay just laughs a nervous laugh.

  Miriam tries to say something else but–

  Tap-Tap grabs her face with his hand and squeezes so hard she thinks her jaw might pop out of its socket. “Meth? This is not meth you stole! You stole cocaine. You kill three of my men. You destroy my submersible!”

  What. The.

  Her mind starts doing panicked acrobatics even as Tap-Tap gives a nod and an impatient gesture at the man standing by her leg, a man she almost forgot about. Goldie suddenly pulls from beneath the table a rusty hacksaw. Miriam squirms, starts to cry out as the man leans hard on her leg and–

  Two weeks from now leaning over the front of a bone-white Cadillac, a Ruger Mini-14 resting on the hood, taking shots fast as his finger can pull the trigger, pop-pop-pop, and someone, a big someone, hides behind a dune and offers return fire from a boxy pistol. Goldie’s finger pulls one last time and this time the gun just goes click and he makes this face of confusion like he thought maybe he had infinite magical video-game bullets and then just as he starts fumbling for more ammo the man behind the dunes fires again and a round catches Goldie right between the teeth. Gold veneers flip out of his mouth in a pinwheel of blood as his brains eject–

  –Goldie rests the teeth of the saw against the top of her leg. The promise of pain bites into her shin-bone.

  Cutting off legs.

  That was Ingersoll’s trick.

  “My old boss,” Tap-Tap says, “he like to cut off body parts. Just like Maman break apart that gull. Mister Ingersoll would say, nature red in tooth and claw. Then he cut some poor maddafucka’s leg or arm or even his dick off. I be honest with you, I let that practice go. Almost like I forgot how much fun it can be! But then we get this tip. This man call me and say, ‘Oye, Tap-Tap, bro, I know who took your coke. I know who fucked up your submarine and kill those three Columbian boys.’ And he tell me your name and where you’ll be and when you’ll walk into my club, and then he say, you know what he say? He say, ‘With her you gotta do it old-school, Tap-Tap. You cut her leg off. Teach her a lesson about what it means to go messing with things she should not be messing with.’”

  It’s then her brain stops with the acrobatics.

  Because oh, shit.

  All the tumblers of this lock fall into place and the door suddenly opens and she figures out just who it is who’s doing this to her.

  It’s Ashley Gaynes.

  He’s a liar. A con-man. Last time they met, that suave, cocky prick drew her in and next thing she knew he was telling her about a suitcase full of meth he stole. Stole from a man named Ingersoll and his two killers, Harriet and Frankie. An act that lost him his leg to Ingersoll’s hacksaw in the back of an SUV. She knew he wasn’t dead. But she thought he was ruined, beaten, that she’d never see him again.

  This is revenge.

  Stealing drugs.

  Blaming it on her.

  Having her leg cut off in parallel.

  …messing with things she should not be messing with…

  She suddenly stammers, “Somebody’s fucking with you, Tap-Tap, playing you for a fool–”

  But he obviously doesn’t like that answer and he gives a hard nod to the man at her feet and she tries to pull her leg out–

  The man yanks the saw back.

  The teeth chew into her leg. Bite into her shin-bone.

  Just one pull. Then he stops.

  She screams. Blood pools beneath her. Soaks down to her sock.

  The plea falls out of her, words strung together with nary a nanosecond between them. “I know who did it I know who did Jesus shit Christ fuck I know who did it.”

  Tap-Tap sticks out his lower jaw like he’s a boar showing off his tusks. Then he gives a slight shake of the head to Goldie at her feet and suddenly the pressure from the saw-teeth in the wound is gone.

  She can’t help it. She gasps. The retreat from immediate pain is a surprising kind of – not pleasure, exactly, but relief.

  Tap-Tap gets his face close to hers.

  She smells garlic and cigar smoke.

  “You– you– you–” she stammers, admonishing herself to get it together, you stuttering idiot, you’re bigger than this, better, tougher, don’t give him the satisfaction of scaring you, but it’s hard not being scared when someone’s about to take your leg as a trophy. “You don’t really think I could pull off hijacking your submarine and stealing your drugs.” Play off his chauvinism. “I’m just a little girl. I barely eat. I got bird bones and broken wings. I’m not even a gull. I’m just a dark little sparrow.”

  “Then who?”

  “His name’s Ashley. Ashley Gaynes. He’s stolen from your… people before. Ingersoll cut off his leg. He’s trying to give me to you so he can get away clean. And he wants to punish me. He wants me to hurt the same way that Hairless F–” Whoa, do you ever watch your mouth? “The same way Ingersoll hurt him. I… I can confirm it, you just, you just call a man who works for you, his name’s Frankie. Gallo, I think. Frankie Gallo.”

  INTERLUDE

  FRANKIE

  Running through snow ain’t really running at all, Frankie thinks as he charges through pine trees stuck up through the white expanse like black spear-tips. It’s more like jogging. Jogging with cement on the
bottom of your boots and shit inside of ’em.

  His feet punch through the crust of snow. Already his legs are on fire from pistoning through the frozen wasteland up here in the goddamn Rocky Mountains, chasing after Dicky Morningdove, a half-Choctaw squirrel-fucker who stole a bunch of government bonds from Wayne Prevette, the man currently employing Frankie to protect his illegal logging operation.

  Frankie thinks, Jesus fuck, how far I’ve fallen.

  He misses the good old days. Horrible as they were.

  He misses Harriet. Horrible as she was.

  Ingersoll, well, that creepy human mannequin could go fuck a duck. Cutting people up. Saving their bones so he could try – and fail – to see the future. Freaky fuck deserved what he got.

  Still. Working for Ingersoll was better than working out here. In the middle of God’s Frozen Nowhere. Chasing Dicky Morningdove: that loser with his lazy eye and his love of pills and those stacks of 1970s biker magazines showing off those 1970s women with their 1970s bushes. Frankie saw a stack of those old magazines while trying to figure out where Dicky got off to, and to him every chick inside those pages looked like she had a Diana Ross afro (or worse, a Donald Trump toupee) between her legs.

  Ahead, Dicky is churning through the snow, big bow-kneed legs pumping like he’s a lizard running across a hot parking lot.

  Frankie thinks, Just shoot him.

  He’s got a pistol. A Walther, slung under his arm.

  But if he shoots, he might kill the little bastard. And then they’ll never find Wayne’s money.

  Instead, Frankie feels at his hip. Got a hatchet hanging there. Up until now he didn’t know what the hell he’d ever do with a hatchet – Wayne just said, “You come up here, you work for me, you carry a hatchet, Gallo. Ain’t no what or who or why about it.” Now, though, Frankie’s thinking maybe Wayne had a point. Because here he is grabbing the hatchet off its loop and cocking his arm back–

  He gives it a hard throw.

  It whirls through open space. The faint whistle of cold air cut.

  And the wooden handle clocks Dicky in the back of the skull.

  Thwack.

  It’s a clumsy hit. Wildly imperfect. Just the same, it causes Dicky to stumble – and one leg cuts in front of the other like a rude shopper, and next thing Frankie knows, Dicky’s pitching face-forward into the snow.

  Of course, he meant to hit the sonofabitch with the hatchet’s blade, but he guesses that’s why they say the end justifies the means.

  Frankie stomps over as Dicky scrabbles to stand.

  Panting, he plants his boot on Dicky’s left shoulder, draws his gun, and fires a shot through Morningdove’s left hand.

  White snow, painted red.

  The gunshot echoes up the mountain and down.

  A murder of crows takes off from nearby pines.

  Dicky gulps air and sobs.

  Frankie sniffs, pulls back his hood, runs his hands through his greasy hair. “I hate you, Morningdove. I don’t wanna be doing this. Jesus. You stole, what, two grand from Prevette? Worth it? Worth the loss of your hand? Tell you something, Dicky, that other hand is lookin’ mighty good, too. I took your left this time, but next time I’ll shoot the hand you use–”

  “I’m a lefty!” Dicky howls.

  Frankie rolls his eyes. “Fuck, whatever. Just tell me where you stashed the cash and I won’t hafta–”

  His cell rings.

  One thing he can say being up here in the mountains. Great cell reception. Shitty radio. But clear signal on his phone.

  He looks at the display.

  Miami.

  Huh.

  He answers it. “I’m fuckin’ busy. I don’t work for you anymore. This better be good.”

  “I got someone here says she knows you.” He recognizes the twangy voice. Tap-Tap’s man. His second. What the fuck’s that tweaker’s name? Jay-Jay. Stands for John-Jacob or something.

  “Like I said, get to it. Fuckin’ busy.”

  “Her name is Miriam.”

  Frankie stiffens. Panic pulls his puppet strings. “What?”

  “Yeah, yeah, Miriam Black. Says you can vouch for her.”

  Vouch? “What’s she sayin’?”

  “She’s saying – well, some drama around here about some coke went missing, a whole lotta coke, and she’s saying it’s not her, she got set up, saying you can tell us what’s what. She steal drugs before from Ingersoll? Said she’s being screwed by some other girl named Ashley–”

  “Ashley ain’t a girl. It’s a guy,” Frankie says.

  “So you know what she’s talking about?”

  And here Frankie thinks, It’s decision time.

  Miriam’s the one who put a bullet through Ingersoll’s head, and by his mileage that’s A-OK. That fuckin’ guy was a monster. Happy to see him go.

  But Harriet.

  She killed Harriet, too.

  Shot her through a bathroom door.

  Harriet was a monster, just like Ingersoll. She worshipped the boss. Woulda cut her own feet open and walked across a swimming pool full of lemon juice for Ingersoll. She wanted to be him. And yet, she and Frankie worked together. Not just as partners, but like two strange-shaped puzzle pieces that look nothing alike but somehow fit perfectly, one next to the other, on every job.

  He misses Harriet.

  Here, Dicky at his feet thinks he sees a chance and starts to roll over and try to get his feet under him.

  Frankie sighs and puts a bullet right in Dicky’s ass. The man howls and screams and thrashes around, blood squirting out of his butt-cheek like he’s one of them water wiggle toys from way back when. Some of it splashes on Frankie’s jeans, and the screams only get louder and louder–

  Frankie presses the phone to his chest and puts another round through the back of Dicky’s head. The half-Choctaw thief slumps forward into a pile of his own brains.

  Well, shit. Now he’s going to have a hard time finding Wayne’s money. But, then again, fuck Wayne Prevette.

  Frankie raises the phone.

  “I know her,” he says, and he’s honestly about to tell Jay-Jay to do whatever he wants to her because she’s a Sunday paper full of bad news, but then he remembers that last time he saw her. There at the base of that lighthouse. Ingersoll upstairs, about to cut out the trucker’s eyeballs. Miriam showed up. Put a gun to his head. Told him he’s gonna be a grandfather someday. Asked him if he liked this life. He said no. And then, like that, she let him go.

  Suddenly he says to Jay-Jay, “She’s not the one. Isn’t her sticking it to you. She’s right. If that Ashley asshole is still alive – we cut off his foot – then it’s him. She didn’t take your drugs.”

  Then he hangs up.

  He looks down at the body in the snow. Steam rising from blood and brains. He says to the corpse, “I really do need to get out of this life.”

  And then he pockets the gun, grabs his hatchet, and heads back down the mountain.

  THIRTY

  A LOW, LOW OFFER

  Jay-Jay hangs up the phone and gives a shrug and a nod.

  Tap-Tap makes a look like he’s disappointed, a kid whose parents won’t take him to the circus, and next thing Miriam knows he’s unbelting her hands and Goldie is letting go of her leg.

  The big Haitian picks her up and sets her down on the floor.

  Her leg almost kicks out from under her. The cut across the shin isn’t a life-ender, but it’s bleeding like a throat-slit pig. Pain radiates out from the wound: ripples of bone-scraped misery. The bass from the club below doesn’t help; she can feel every glitchy dubstep-wah-wah-wah-boom in the wound like a fisting heartbeat.

  Tap-Tap tosses her a rag from a cobwebby pool table across the room.

  “Clean yourself,” he says. “You bleed too much.”

  She bites back any snark that threatens the sting of its lash, and takes the dusty rag and presses it against her leg.

  Then Tap-Tap strides over. Bowling ball fists on his broad hips. “This is how it work n
ow. You get to keep your leg. You get to keep your life. But that is not a gift. It is a deal I’m making. A… how you say? A bargain. You will bring me this man with the girl’s name – the one who stole them. If you do not bring him to me, I will come back to you and I will take more than your leg. I will cut your tits. I will stuff you full of snakes and worms. I will turn your head into a candle. Because I have been dishonored. Because the universe likes to be balanced.”

  She swallows a hard knot. “Lemme guess. A voodoo thing?”

  “Bah.” He waves her off. “Ingersoll believed in ghosts and pigeon guts. I don’t truck with that shit. But I believe in vengeance. I believe that if you take from me I will take ten times from you. Debts will be paid and this debt is now on you, Miss Black.”

  He offers her a hand.

  What else is she going to do?

  She shakes it.

  He grinds her knuckles together like he’s trying to make bone flour.

  No death vision finds her. Not for him. Not for Daddy Long-Legs over there – Jay-Jay. She’s already seen how both were going to die, and she saved them from that fate.

  Now she just has to save herself.

  And that means finding Ashley Gaynes.

  THIRTY-ONE

  GULL HEART

  Miriam tries not to panic as she drives, but her emotions are like that poor gull: wings broken, legs twisted from the body, beak snapped. Flopping around and pumping blood.

  Before her is the world: the highway, the night, the lights above the rain-slick streets of Miami, and all of it seems hopelessly infinite – earth and road and ocean and sky in every goddamn direction, long shadows stretching across countless miles – and Ashley Gaynes could be hiding in any bolt-hole or doorway along the way. Finding him will be like looking for a clean heroin needle in a pit full of dirty ones.