Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series Book 2)

by Cindy Brandner

  “Dinna’ bother,” Olie said, his breath a rasp in his throat, lungs laboring for oxygen, as the heart began to fail.

  The gun had fallen away and lay now, a cruel length of steel upon the ice, well out of Olie’s reach. Though just to be certain Casey picked it up and tucked it inside his coat.

  Olie was laying awkwardly, legs bent under him at an uncomfortable angle. Casey straightened them out and put his own cap under the man’s head.

  “Look up,” Olie said, and it was then Casey noticed the odd shifting colors crossing through the man’s eyes. He looked up. The sky was moving in a vast curtain of light.

  “Aurora Borealis,” Casey said in wonderment, stunned at the ice-flame colors rippling through the sky above him, forgetting for a moment that he could no longer feel his fingers or toes, forgetting that he might die if he didn’t get back to the boat and out of these wet clothes. “My God.” he breathed in awe, feeling like a child getting its first glimpse of the world.

  Beside him, Olie stirred slightly, breath a translucent white in the blue air. “Do you think there is a God?” Every word was a miniature battle against the limits of mortality.

  Casey looked at the sky above, unravelling in streams of indigo and emerald, violet and a fierce penumbra of red. Below him, the ice, in its eternal impermanence, shifted slightly. The world seemed all water and sky, fragile and ever changing. And there amongst the violent colors that streamed and billowed, adrift on a chancy element, at the complete mercy of nature, he found his faith and knew that he’d never really lost it.

  “Yes,” he said softly, as much to the heavens as to the man beside him, “yes I do.”

  “Pull it out,” Olie said.

  “What?”

  “The harpoon, pull it out.”

  “Ye’ll die.”

  “I know.”

  Casey swallowed, the ice crystals in the air giving the whole scene before him a dreadful clarity.

  “First reach into the pocket of my coat—on the inside,” Olie gasped.

  Casey frowned, but did as the man asked, his hand clumsy with cold. He emerged with a plastic bag, inside of which was a roll of money—American dollars—several thousands from the look of things.

  “What is this?”

  “The money—Love Hagerty paid me—to kill ye—take it. Think of it...as reparation.”

  “I don’t want it.”

  Olie shook his head slowly, the movement exaggeratedly slow. “Just take it.”

  The words were slurred, and the blue eyes were closing for long seconds at a time now.

  “It hurts—please...pull...the fucking thing...out.”

  Casey looked Olie full in the eyes, and was surprised to see a smile spreading across the ruddy, weathered face.

  “No... hard feelings...boy?”

  “No hard feelings,” Casey whispered in reply. And then he grabbed the steel bar tight, pulling it out in one hard move. It came free with a black upswell of blood in its wake, the scent of copper heavy in the air. The blue eyes blinked slowly, and an odd smile spread across Olie’s face.

  “Thank you,” he said, voice barely more than a slipstream of oxygen. Against his arm, numbed with cold, Casey felt a change, as though life in leaving sought a last touch of that which it had been, but no longer was.

  He crossed himself quickly, knowing he had to move before the lethargy from the fierce cold set in and rendered him as helpless as the man next to him.

  Time blurred along with his flesh after that. And he felt a vague sense of surprise when he arrived back at the boat, with three wounded men in the dory—two able to get on Jeannie with the assistance of the Captain and two other crewmen. The third was badly burned and had died sometime during the crawl across the deadly ice field.

  Back on the relative warmth of Jeannie’s Star, all was pandemonium. Lengths of bandage were strewn about, blood and the smell of burned flesh were thick on the air and the sound of men in great pain resounded off the thick planking of the ship.

  Captain Jack, looking more like a demented leprechaun than ever, gave Casey a cursory glance as he came aboard.

  “Got all your bits and bobs boy? Nothing frostbitten?”

  “No, I’ll do,” Casey said, for though his extremities were still numb, there was a painful tingle setting up in his fingertips, toes, and thighs that told him he’d not suffered frostbite.

  “Good, we’re heading back for th’island, can’t take any more on and there’s two more ships waiting to take back wounded. I’ll be damned if I lose one of my men out here. So back we go. Lost thirty-three from the sealer, and there’s still twenty odd missing, but we’re hauling back over a hundred men.”

  Hallbjorn stepped on board then, having thriftily retrieved his harpoon, Casey saw with a queasy shift in his stomach.

  Captain Jack eyed the two of them shrewdly, “Where’s the Norwegian?”

  “He fell into sea,” Hallbjorn said, face blank and tone neutral. “He,” he pointed at Casey with the harpoon, “try to save him.” Hallbjorn shrugged, “too cold, sink too fast.”

  “Oh Christ have mercy.” Captain Jack didn’t look as if he entirely believed the big Icelander. But at present he had to get his boat back to Newfoundland, and didn’t have time to dispute Hallbjorn’s story.

  Though Casey knew there would be no evidence with which to dispute the story. For Hallbjorn hadn’t gone back to merely retrieve the harpoon, but to sink the body and all its traces into the black and frigid sea. The sea that would welcome the still warm body back to its salty bosom, where it would never be found.

  Hallbjorn gestured to Casey to follow him down the hatchway. He left him sitting in the galley where hot coffee waited on the counter. He returned moments later with a big fuzzy sweater and two murky brown bottles.

  “You wear,” he tossed the sweater onto Casey’s lap and busied himself with taking the lids off the two bottles.

  The man was so huge that the sweater fell halfway to Casey’s knees. But it was warm and dry and, at present, that was all Casey required in the universe.

  Hallbjorn held the smaller bottle to Casey’s lips and Casey took it gratefully, thinking a nip of whiskey would not come amiss right now. He took a hearty slug and immediately gagged. Whiskey it wasn’t. Hallbjorn was grinning, hairy face split like a whiskered moon.

  “That’s revoltin’,” Casey said, throat still convulsing from the slimy taste.

  “Cod liver oil—human antifreeze. It’s how we survive Iceland winter.”

  Suppressing the desire to scrub his tongue off with the hairy sweater sleeve, Casey said, “I— thank ye—ye saved my life out there.”

  Hallbjorn shrugged, blueberry eyes hard as marble. “Ja, þú ert velkominn. I did not like him.”

  “No?” Casey said, feeling the fine tremors of shock begin to jump along his skin.

  “No, he talk too much.”

  Hallbjorn stuck another bottle under his nose, laughing when Casey shook his head and pulled away from the vapors issuing forth from its neck.

  “Not cod liver oil—svarti dauði—you drink.”

  Casey, not wanting to commit some breach of Icelandic courtesies, drank. Though he manfully refrained from gagging this time, his eyes were streaming after two swallows.

  “What the hell is that?”

  Hallbjorn grinned again, “Is svarti dauði—how to say?” He furrowed his massive brow. “Ah in English—is Black Death.”

  “I believe it,” Casey said fervently, and took another swig.

  JEANNIE’S STAR CAME TO REST in one of the wee outland ports. Mab’s Harbor was the name of the hamlet, and though Casey was too tired to pay much attention to his surroundings he knew the ripe reek of a herring village when he smelled one. Compared to the smell of burned human flesh however, it was positively flower-like.

  He took a deep breath in of the fishy scent, grateful to be alive. Beyond that all he wanted was to sleep until the resurrection. The small harbor was awash with people and bobbing lights
, but he couldn’t seem to make sense of anything and the faces were blurring in front of his eyes even as he stood.

  “You need a bed?” A hand touched his elbow and he turned. A homely face, long and careworn, emerged out of the babble of light and sound. It was one of the men he’d brought back with him, off the ice.

  “Aye, I do.”

  “Come with me then.”

  Casey followed the man up the steep hill from the harbor. It was well past dawn and though there was fog sifting up from the sea, he could make out snow upon great granite headlands that loomed dark and threatening towards the morning sky. The harbor had been built in the crevice between two jutting promontories and thus was protected from the worst of the sea’s wrath. On top of the headlands was another matter altogether. There the winds had scoured the rock bare, and yet there was a spare, chill beauty to the tiny cluster of houses and shops that perched upon these bleak surroundings.

  “Name’s John,” the man said as they rounded the twisting main street, which ran right to the foot of a small house with a peaked roof and a brightly painted blue door.

  “Mine’s Casey.”

  “Irishman?”

  “Aye.”

  And that was the extent of the conversation, until Casey found himself sitting on the edge of a bed, fingers too stiff to unlace the overly large boots Hallbjorn had lent him.

  “Here man, I’ll get those.”

  He’d a vague sense of relief when the boots were removed and then there was the touch of rough yet gentle hands laying him down to rest, and a blanket being tucked up high over his shoulders. Then all was darkness, warm and shrouding. He fell into it gratefully.

  HE SLEPT A FULL DAY, waking once in the long hours, and then only to turn over and sink back into unconsciousness with barely a glimmer of thought.

  He awoke to a little room, walls painted the color of corroded copper. The fog had cleared and he could, when he sat up, see the bleak headlands, and beyond, the gray water, calm today. He lowered his legs stiffly to the floor, every inch of his body complaining of bruises and cuts.

  He dressed slowly, washing in the cold water left in a basin on a brass-bound chest that sat in the corner of the room.

  He found his way to the kitchen down a narrow hall, decorated with sepia-toned portraits of hard-looking people. The man’s ancestors no doubt, and no wonder at the hard look of them either, for this was a hard land.

  John was in the kitchen, packing up a bag with sweaters and socks, boots and small, lumpy articles wrapped in newsprint.

  “Wife’s left tea a’brewin’ an’ there’s a plate for ya in the oven. Eat yer fill.”

  “Thank ye,” Casey said, retrieving the kettle and pouring the tea into a cracked white cup.

  “I’ll be off then, boat’s leaving for the pack in an hour. I’d best get down an’ see the captain before then.”

  “Yer goin’ back out there?” Casey said disbelievingly, watching the man hang his canvas bag over his shoulder.

  The man nodded, shifting his wad of chew from the left cheek to the right. “I’m fit enough, got eight hungry mouths to feed. Growlin’ bellies don’t care ‘bout the danger of the thing an’ my fear ain’t goin’ to fill them up either, so I go an’ do what needs doin’. ‘Tain’t much else to be done.”

  Casey nodded slowly, seeing an odd beauty in the man’s homely face. “Then best of luck on yer travels man.”

  The man turned back in the doorway, the chill blue light framing his worn countenance. “An’ on your own, man. Chance should find you again in Mab’s Harbor one of these days, there’ll always be an open door an’ a place at the kitchen table.”

  “Thank ye, I’ll keep it in mind should I happen this way,” Casey replied softly.

  The house was silent around him after the man left, other than the occasional creak and the sound of the fire crackling in the stove. The lady of the house had left him a good breakfast of ham, hotcakes, and partridge berry preserves.

  The house was small, and the idea that ten people lived within its walls astounded him. He took in the cracked and faded linoleum, the peeling paint and the worn furniture. It was shabby but it exuded the warmth of a real home.

  He ate the food quickly, clearing his dishes away after. Then he reached in his bag and withdrew the bloody fistful of dollars that Olie had forced into his hand as he was dying.

  He peeled off the outer bills, the ones stained rusty with blood. The remainder he left on the table, tucked between the sugar bowl and the fat bottomed creamer. Then slinging his bag over his shoulder he opened the door and turned toward the sea.

  He was going home for good, and to hell with any man who stood in his way.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Caught in the Crosshairs

  AGENT GUS HAD TOLD HER that if the tag in the book was ever red, it meant they had to meet right away because some unforeseen calamity had occurred. Though Pamela could plainly see the scarlet length of paper that lay in Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, her mind wanted fiercely to deny it. Wanted to hope that some patron had left it behind. The mildewy smell that emanated off the pages told her otherwise, however. The only time this book was ever taken off the shelves was when Agent Gus removed it to place that week’s marker inside and when she retrieved it to see what color lay within the brittle yellow pages.

  That little strip of scarlet had brought her here, to their agreed meeting spot. It had been three months since she had told him about the secret meetings held between Love Hagerty and Mark Ryan. Thus far that particular trail had led nowhere. It was as if the Agent had sensed that someone might be onto him and Hagerty, and neither, as far as she knew, had been near the other in all that time.

  It was cold by the pond, a fine drizzle of rain rippling the surface of the water that still had a thin coating of ice upon it. Agent Gus was waiting there for her, wrapped in a gray trenchcoat, hair mussed and tie askew. He looked slightly ill. As she’d never seen him less than composed in his manner if not his dress, she got a sick feeling herself immediately. The news was going to be bad, and there was no way that could bode well for her and her part in this play.

  “How are you?” he asked with a wobbly smile.

  “Let’s skip the small talk,” she said, “you look like you’ve just swallowed a worm.”

  “I think maybe I have,” he said and there was no mistaking the worry that radiated off the man like a doom-filled fog.

  “What do you mean?” she asked, through lips that suddenly felt ice-cold.

  “I think Love Hagerty has been brought in as an informant, so the boys here can take down the Bassarelli family.”

  “Could you say that again?” she said, praying that she’d heard him wrong.

  “I think Love Hagerty is partnered up with someone above me in the field office. It was your telling me about seeing him and Mark Ryan together that got me looking into this. But now something else has happened that makes me certain you were right.”

  Oh sweet Jesus, she had heard him right.

  “What?”

  “Because my boss is trying to shut down your file, saying you’re of no more use to us. Which is just feeb-speak meaning they’ve got bigger fish to fry and are trying to protect someone they consider a better asset. I can’t see who else they’d be protecting if it’s not Love Hagerty.”

  “That’s not all there is to it, though, is it?” Pamela asked, the blood in her veins running very cold so that she could feel every movement of it under her skin.

  “No. The agent I think is running Hagerty got a ‘tip’ about where to find the remains of an old girlfriend of Blackie’s—Cassandra Neil—that’s been missing for six years. The police had always pegged Blackie for the disappearance but they couldn’t build the case well enough without the body.”

  “And you think Love told them where to find the body?”

  “He wants Blackie gone. He’s ready to move on. Thinks it’s the right time to become respectable. I can’t see why else t
hey’d be trying to shut down your file. Odd that the remains of a girl that’s been missing for six years suddenly conveniently turn up, when no one had a clue where to look before. The case has been cold for years. It hadn’t been re-opened either.”

  “Blackie had her killed?”

  “Yes,” Agent Gus swallowed, “and that’s not all. Diane Killian is missing as well. The staties called us two days back saying her mother was frantic, hadn’t been able to get ahold of her in a few days. Usually Diane never missed Sunday dinner with her family and so when she didn’t show up last Sunday she got worried. Went to the little apartment Diane shared with Blackie down in Dorchester and there’s not a thing missing. Looks like she was interrupted in the middle of making dinner. There were onions shrivelling up on the chopping block but no sign of Diane.”

  Pamela shut her eyes, head whirling. Pretty curvaceous Diane, with her bright blonde hair and long manicured nails. She’d occasionally done temp secretarial work for Love in the Back Bay office. She was the sort who brought in fresh baked muffins a couple times a week, and knew whose aunt was sick, whose kids were starting kindergarten and when everyone’s birthday was. Pamela had liked her, she was easy to talk to and had never treated Pamela as Love’s high-priced whore.

  The wind suddenly felt terribly cold, and she wrapped her scarf tighter around her throat, knowing nothing was going to help the chill that now penetrated her very bones.

  “Her mother was real worried in particular because Diane had been talking about a new man she’d met, a banker from downtown. She was going to make the move away from Blackie. Cassandra was going to leave him just before she disappeared too—seeing the pattern here?” he asked bleakly.

  “Nobody leaves Blackie,” Pamela replied, “unless they have his permission first.”

  What she didn’t add was that nobody left Love either, including herself. That he and Blackie were two sides of the same coin, only both sides of the coin were black.