The Cormorant (23 page)

“Like on the TV?”

“Uh-huh. Looking for a, uh, perp.”
Is that the word? Perp?
“A perp hiding out here in the Keys somewhere.”

“The Keys seem small but they’re pretty big.”

“No kidding. Where would a–” But before she can finish the question the bird emerges from the water with a splash. Throat bulging like a snake that ate a fat-ass rabbit. Jerry helps the bird stand on the edge of the boat and he reaches into the creature’s mouth like he’s rooting around in a trash can for something he accidentally threw away–

And he pulls out two fish.

Plop. Plop.

The smell of seawater and the life that comes with it crawls up her nose. Corie the cormorant squawk-oinks.

Then it gives Miriam a look.

She’s sure of it. It turns that freaky turquoise eye right toward her. The skin around it is puckered and leathery, kinda what she imagines a dinosaur’s asshole looks like. It blinks but it doesn’t blink –
something
slides over its eye, something cloudy and opaque that darkens the eye but does not hide it.

Jerry must see the look on Miriam’s face. He says, “Nictitating membrane. She slides that over her eye so when she dives she can see underwater. It’s like a reptile thing.”

“But she’s a bird.”

“The dinosaurs never went extinct. They just became birds.”

That explains it.
“So they’re all operating on a reptile brain.”

“More advanced than a reptile’s. But at the core, yeah – it’s still that prehistoric
kill-screw-sleep-eat
thing.”

Miriam thinks,
That sounds familiar
.

Maybe that’s why she likes birds and they like her.

Though the way this one’s giving her the shit-eye, she’s not sure.

Suddenly the bird splashes back into the water.

“Sorry,” Jerry says. “You were saying?”

“Oh, ah. Yeah. I was gonna ask where you think a… perp might hide out down here.”

He thrusts his tongue into the pocket of his cheek like he’s thinking. “Well, lots of places. Thing about these islands is, there’s a whole lot of ’em. Like, close to two thousand of them. Some of them are practically no bigger than this boat. But it’s not just the ones the roads connect – it’s like, all these little outliers.” He points to little dark pockets of palm and earth out on the horizon. “Now, most of those islands are down by Key West. Lots of places to hide down there. That’s why the Keys are known for some… less savory actions, you know what I mean?”
Knowwhaddamean?
“Smuggling pot. Smuggling coke. Making meth. Smuggling Cuban immigrants out of the Keys. Bringing bodies down to hide
in
the Keys.”

The enormity of the situation is a tsunami crashing down on her shores. Three days to find a ghost. Three days to fail.

“You ever hear about submarines carrying drugs?”

“Oh yeah, sure. Sometimes they come up from Cuba or Columbia. Narco-subs, they call ‘em. They used to use fast boats, then switched to these little subs that couldn’t go deep. But they do pretty deep now. Radar slides off ‘em like water off Corie’s back.”

“Do those go through the Keys?”

“Sure they do. Usually down through those little islands I was talking about. You lookin’ for someone into the drug thing?”

“Yeah. They could be anywhere.”

“Too bad you’re not psychic,” Jerry says, laughing.

And she starts to laugh with him but it’s a fake, forced laugh.
Oh ha ha ha ho ho ho you silly cad I am a psychic except I’m the wrong type of psychic and I can’t just–

The world plunges into the water.

It’s like her mind is wrenched out of her body. Dragged down, down, into the deep. Down through a flurry of bubbles. Through a tangle of weeds. Her throat feels full. Something moves in her esophagus. Something
struggling
. She can’t breathe. Can’t turn around to go up. She’s sinking like a stone.

Please stop please help

Below her, a great abyss lit by spears of light – the shine of fish swimming, catching the sun, in and out of brain-shaped bulges of coral. She’s pointed toward it like an arrow falling through open sea.

I’m the bird.

Holy shit, I’m the bird
.

But then, down in the coral–

She sees a body. Fish-eaten. Waterlogged. The gray meat of the skin sloughing off, swaying like seaweed.

She knows the body.

She knows that face.

It’s Eleanor Caldecott.

The woman’s jaw creaks open. More bubbles unmoor, drifting to the surface. A green eel hides in the well of her throat–

Impossible. She’s dead. She died in the river, not in the sea…

But then the woman speaks – rotten jaw opening and closing – and Miriam hears the voice in her mind, words like bubbles rupturing:

YOU ARE NOT ALONE

WE ARE FIXED BY TRAGEDY

DARKNESS AND CLAMOR

Then, a childish voice, the voice of Wren there in the deep, sliding around bubbles like a curling worm: IT TAKES ONE TO KNOW ONE…

And then the world shifts, spinning on its axis. Light behind is now above, the liquid jewels of sun on the water’s surface.

Everything shimmers–

Miriam gasps, her body jerking like it’s been hit by a King Kong fist. She gags. Chokes. Spits over the side of the boat just as the cormorant launches up out of the bay, throat clogged anew with fish.

Jerry stares. “Hey, you all right?”

He reaches out for her arm–

She tries to pull away.
No no no no
–

Seven days from now, Jerry swings a gaff hook at Ashley Gaynes in the parking lot of the Conch Out Inn, and Ashley deftly sidesteps it. Jerry throws everything he has at him – puts all his energy into swinging that hook – but even on a fake leg Ashley isn’t fazed. He moves, almost casually, like he’s just trying to get out of the sun – and with every small and calculated movement the hook cuts through the air,
swish
,
swish
,
swish
.

Ashley’s like a cat playing with its prey.

Finally there comes a point when he looks bored and rolls his eyes, and Jerry tries one more time to swing with the hook and Ashley just leans back, lets the hook grab open air only an inch in front of his nose–

Then he pulls a .357 revolver out from a hip holster like he’s a Wild West shooter, and he puts a round in Jerry’s gut. The hook clatters.

Ashley grabs Jerry by the throat. Holds him close. Whispers in his ear. “Where was she staying? She had a bag. Full of money. I want it back.” Jerry tries to spit on him. Ashley punches Wu in the throat. Jerry wheezes.

Ashley turns his head to the sky.

He’s speaking to her again.

“You like the show, Miriam? Everyone you touch, I kill. You’re a poison pill, a toxic cloud, you’re the human equivalent to–”

Suddenly, a black shadow above his head. The cormorant lands on the back of his shoulders, beating him with its wings, stabbing at him with its beak – a clumsy, inelegant attack – and Ashley screams like a woman, lets go of Jerry, backpedals with the gun up–

The bird keeps coming–

Bang, bang, bang
–

The cormorant drops to the ground, squirting blood.

Jerry clutches his middle, staggers forward and falls to his knees and paws on the ground for the hook–

And finds the .357 pressed against his temple.

His life disappears in a flash of powder and furious thunder.

Miriam bats his hand away and recoils to the far end of the boat, which is not very fucking far but right now she doesn’t want to be touched, doesn’t want to look at this poor bastard whose life is now hitched to hers just because she chose his motel, doesn’t want to look at the bird and its freaky gemstone eye, doesn’t want to look anywhere but in her own lap.

She fidgets with a cigarette.

Fumbles with her lighter.

Drops it. Growls.

The vision lingers, like how if you recorded over one VHS tape, you might still see the ghost of the old recording still haunting the screen.

In the vision, Ashley shows up at the motel. Kills Jerry. Kills the bird. But seven days–? That happens
after
her mother. He’s doing cleanup. He just wanted the money. The money she took from “Steve Max?”

Jerry stares. The cormorant looks up at other birds – pelicans – flying overhead. A millstone grinds in Miriam’s head. It feels like it’s pulverizing her to dust. But then something clicks–

…
too bad you’re not psychic…

…you are not alone…

She knows that others exist like her. People with powers that don’t add up, that don’t fit into any boxes. She met a storefront psychic – Miss Nancy – who told her she was the hand of death. Then Eleanor Caldecott had her own strange power: the ability to see the consequences of a person’s life, chained together in a single vision.

That’s how she’ll find Ashley.

She needs to find a goddamn psychic.

Another psychic, at least.
A real one,
she thinks with no small irony. Someone with an ability that does something worth a damn.

“I need to go back to shore,” she says.

“Yeah, you got it,” Jerry answers. Then he fires up the motor. Never taking his eyes off her. Like he’s afraid she might bite.

If only he knew what it meant to be caught in her gravity.

THIRTY-EIGHT

PSYCHICS AT SUNDOWN

The drive back down to Key West feels like she’s being chased: hounded by a massive wolf, pursued by a hungry shark, stalked by a beast of death whose shape transforms but whose teeth are ever-sharp.

The Malibu passes the Torch Keys and she thinks of that poor Parrothead fucker, sliced up on a patio table as a message for her.

She thinks of her mother, stabbed to death on a boat.

Of Jerry Wu, shot to death in his own parking lot.

She keeps her lead foot from falling. Just barely. Can’t have a cop stop her. Not now. Has to keep clean and clear. It’s the only way. Her base urges – those
reptilian
urges – want out of their bottle but if she wants to save lives she’s going to have to stopper them up and bury it in the sand.

Just before she hits the Land of Mile Zero, she stops off at the impound yard a mile north of the jail. The guy lets her in and she navigates an uneven, mostly empty lot until she finds the Fiero parked toward the back. She pops the door, doesn’t even bother with the ignition yet–

Most important thing is the money.

She looks in the back, under the seat.

Nothing. No money.

Cold fury cuts through the sweat. No money was on her “voucher.” They didn’t list any bag of cash. Which means one of those cops took it.

Her first impulse is to get back in the Malibu and drive it through the jail wall and up every ass of every cop in the joint until one of them starts spilling money like a hammer-struck slot machine.

But that won’t get her anywhere.

Except, you know,
thrown in jail
again.

Calm. Breathe. Cigarette. Yes.

She pops the trunk. With a trembling hand she flips up the flap to expose where the spare tire would usually go–

And there sits a bag. Full of money.

They found the first bag, not the second.

Which means she still has five grand.

She laughs around her cigarette, then on a lark tries to start the Fiero. The engine sounds like an old woman gasping before she dies. That answers that question, then. Miriam throws the keys far as she can and heads back to the Malibu, and takes the Malibu into Key West.

Key West is packed. People all over the streets. Same mix of miscreants and deviants: the rich white Jimmy Buffet fans, the sailboat hipsters, the freakshow pirates. Tourists and locals and aliens.

Miriam parks the car and makes a hard-charge toward Mallory Square and, in particular, the sign she saw the last time she was here: PSYCHIC READINGS I WILL TELL YOU YOUR FUTURE. The whole square is in some kind of sunset celebration. People gathered to watch the blob of orange sherbet melt into the creamsicle ocean – drinking and singing and watching all the little shows and buying all the kitschy tchotchkes (
Say that ten times fast
, she thinks) they can find. Mimes with trained cats, pirates juggling rum bottles, freaks breathing fire and lifting barbells with chains hooked to nipples stretched like taffy–