Devour (18 page)

Kharkov opened the door and ushered in one of Moore’s officers, who was holding a pair of binoculars. “Sir? It’s back.”

“It?”

“You know, sir. The, ah, whale.”

“You saw it, Graves?” Moore said.

Graves shook his head. “Not clearly, sir. It’s been mostly submerged, and the fog is getting worse. But it has . . . something. It’s . . .” He swallowed. “You have to come see for yourself.”

* * *

“I don’t see anything,” Moore said, scanning the seas with the binoculars. “Did it show up on the radar?”

They stood on the deck way, twenty feet above the main deck, the bow of the boat curving out thirty feet in front of them. No passengers were up on the observation deck; Moore had restricted access, referencing the weather and the rough seas. Wells was there, though, plucking at Moore’s sleeve, telling him he knew what the creature was. There was a waitress standing at the stairwell, watching Brian with a mixture of sympathy and distrust. She was dressed in a white blouse and a short black skirt, holding a pair of heels and alternating glances between his group and the sea. She had a light green streak in her auburn hair, a pretty face with clear skin.

“I didn’t notice,” Graves said. “But it was there, Captain, too big to be anything else. And I saw what it had in its . . . what it had with it.”

In front of them, the waves rolled into the bank of fog. Crazy weather, Brian thought. Usually, the wind would scatter the fog, drive it into tatters. But the low-hanging clouds were persistent, scudding all around them, creating a shifting seascape where you could see fifty yards one minute, a hundred the next. He could hear the bilges pumping jets of water back into the ocean, going for two or three minutes, stopping for a few seconds, then starting up again.

“There!” Graves shouted. “Twenty degrees off the bow, right at the edge of the fog. It’s . . . shit. It’s gone again.”

They could hear a splashing sound, not unlike the sounds dolphins would make as they leaped ahead of the ship. Two splashes, the first softer and smooth as it emerged from the water; the second a moment later, louder and sloppier. It sounded smaller than it had appeared, Brian thought. Maybe they were hearing a flipper, or a tail fin.

Slooop.
The cloud of fog began to peel apart, and he caught a glimpse of something falling into the ocean, fifty yards away.

Whatever had fallen bobbed on the surface, riding the rolling waves, then disappeared. Moore, looking through his binoculars, seemed about to say something when the water boiled and the object launched from the water. Something dark and massive swirled under the surface where the smaller object had been.

“It’s a person,” Moore said. His voice sounded dead. “A child.”

“No, sir,” Graves said. “We just did a passenger check. Nobody’s missing that we know of.”

“I saw it,” Moore said. “It’s a person.”

“Yes,” Graves replied, glancing at Brian. “But it’s not a child.”

Brian felt a wave of nausea as he moved forward, understanding. Graves tried to hold him back, and Brian brushed him aside as he bulled toward the captain. Kharkov stepped in front of him and Brian reacted instinctively, not with malice but only impatience, his arm flicking out, knuckles connecting squarely with soft cartilage. Kharkov fell back, holding his nose and cursing. Moore found himself suddenly cornered against the rail, his mouth half-opened, Brian advancing toward him. He glanced behind him, at the long fall he would have, and held up a hand.

“I didn’t—”

Brian’s hand went out, moving with the same speed that had surprised Kharkov, and yanked the binoculars from Moore’s hand.

The others had fallen away, creating a pod of free space around him. Graves was holding Kharkov back, the latter of whom had bright streams of blood running over his mouth. Brian fumbled with the focus on the binoculars, trained it on the edge of the fog banks. The lenses were spotted with condensation, creating tiny circular prisms that distorted his view. But there was enough clear space for him to see the water, to find the disturbance just below the surface.

Gilly’s corpse was thrown high into the air, cartwheeling over a wave. His legs were gone at the knees, and tendons trailed him like pale tentacles. His shirt had been ripped, and there was a long gash along the side of his face, but otherwise he had not been mutilated. One side of his inflatable life belt had been punctured, but the other flotation cells still held air.

His body slapped face-first into the sea. A moment later, the water swirled again, and his body disappeared. Brian caught a glimpse of the creature, swimming just under the surface, Gilly’s body in the side of its mouth. Then it shot upward, the massive neck coming forward with a snap, and the corpse was launched into the air again. This time his body went straight up, his long hair covering his face and then falling away to reveal his waxy skin, the lifeless, staring eyes. No blood left in him.

“What’s it doing?”

He lowered the binoculars and turned. The woman with the streak of green hair had crossed through the wheelhouse and joined them. Destiny, according to her brass nameplate. She was the only one within three feet of Brian; the rest of the men had fallen back. He could hear something pattering on the deck behind them and saw Kharkov’s nose was bleeding into his cupped palm, dripping onto the deck through his fingers.

The woman was looking at him, waiting for an answer.

He held the binoculars to her. She held them up and Brian showed her how to fold them in to fit her eyes and adjust the focus. She swept the binoculars back and forth, then steadied them. Gilly’s body went into the air again, rotating slightly in a horrible pantomime of a dancer’s pirouette, then fell limply back into the ocean. She sucked in breath, and a low sound came from her that Brian had not heard in a long time. Not quite pity, not exactly despair. A combination of the two, distinctly feminine.

She lowered the binoculars, hands trembling. “It’s playing with him.”

Brian nodded, not trusting his voice, and took the binoculars from her.

“Don’t,” she said, putting her hand on his forearm. “Don’t watch it anymore.”

He lowered the binoculars and studied the creature with his naked eye, trying to ignore what it was doing to his best friend. It stayed just out of sight, working at the edge of the fog bank, submerging a few feet when it approached the ship. Occasionally, part of it would emerge, a sliver of dark green-black hide. Toying with the body, the mindless cruelty of a cat with a mouse . . . or something more?

“It doesn’t want to be seen,” Graves said, joining them at the rail. He was snapping pictures with his phone. “It comes right to the surface but no further.”

It rolled then, displacing enough water that they were able to get a sense of how long it was, how truly massive. Graves’s phone clicked and clicked, but when Brian glanced at the screen there was nothing to see but water and fog, with a faint shadow beneath the surface.

“That’s not a whale,” Destiny said, so softly only Brian heard her.

Gilly’s body went cartwheeling toward them. It landed just in front of the bow, disappearing from their sight under the curve of the ship’s hull.

Then nothing, just the monotonous sound of waves rolling past them.

“This is horrible,” Destiny said. “My God.
It’s
horrible.”

Brian barely heard her. He was thinking of a night several years ago, he and Gilly hunched over their drinks in the dim yellow light of the Riff-Raff’s back booth. Drunk and getting drunker, at the point in the night where things could be said and perhaps not remembered. He had been talking about Sienna and Mason, wondering whether he should put up a marker for them, as her family had just done back in Wisconsin. A slab of granite over empty ground. The bile was there, always there, and when it needed to come out Gilly was the only person he could talk to.

They just want a place to visit,
Gilly said.
Someplace specific, you know?

Gilly had nodded.
You blame yourself. Can’t expect them to feel any different.

That part doesn’t bother me,
Brian had said.
Where they ended up. The ocean is no different than a cemetery.

Sure,
Gilly had said. A long pause.
Over deep water, that’s about the best way there is. Right back to where we come from.

That’s where I’m going to end up, too,
Brian had said. He was quite drunk by then and the morbidity he often entertained was coming out.

Maybe,
Gilly said.
But not for a while, okay, buddy?

They drank in silence. Then Gilly had set his glass down, hard.
Listen, don’t go getting any ideas about a sailor’s funeral for me
.
The old man had me on the sea since I was just a little shit, and I never cared for it that much. When I go, plant me somewhere dry.

It was the kind of conversation that seemed, in retrospect, to have stumbled into a sacred place and then back out. Now, thinking back to Gilly’s words, which at the time he had thought were perhaps an attempt to lighten the mood, he realized that it was the only request Gilly had ever asked of him.

“I’m going down there,” he said, pointing at the bow. He turned to face Moore and the rest of them, and something in his face made them retreat. Even Kharkov, with his bloody hand still clamped over the middle of his face, took a cautious half-step backwards. “And I’m pulling him onboard.”

F
rankie wasn’t sure, but he thought the odds were pretty good he would hear the guy’s neck break.

Thor had one forearm wrapped around Prower’s lieutenant’s neck, his free hand pressed against the man’s forehead. Hornaday, a clean-cut, slab-muscled, ex-military mercenary sort, looked scared shitless. He had been scuffling with one of Latham’s men when Frankie and Thor entered the room, Hornaday all over the smaller man, then stepping back to pull a knife from somewhere on his body. Frankie couldn’t tell where. The man was fast, the move practiced, and Frankie was already wondering how to dump the body when Thor moved forward.

He came in from Hornady’s blind side, chopped the knife from his hand, and spun him around in a blur of his huge arms. Two maybe three seconds. Now Hornaday’s knife lay on the floor in front of him, and the wrist that had been waving it around was bent at an awkward angle. Thor’s long blond hair had come undone from his ponytail, the only sign he’d exerted himself. Some of his hair lay over Hornaday’s pain-reddened face. It was one of those images Frankie knew he’d never forget, the red-faced mercenary with the golden locks.

Now Thor was looking at Frankie, waiting for the command. Hornaday’s neck would make a sound like a walnut breaking under a boot. Just one nod, and he’d have a sound to remember along with the image.

It would also, Frankie thought, result in a lot of cleanup. An immutable fact in his line of work; the more interesting something was to watch, or hear, the more cleanup was involved afterward.

“Let him go,” Frankie said.

Thor shoved Hornaday away from him, then leaned forward and placed his boot on the knife blade. He lifted up on the handle, and the blade snapped off just above the hilt. Thor kicked the handle away, locking eyes with the other bodyguards one by one. Nobody would hold his gaze.

“This is silly,” Frankie said. “Fighting with knives? Over what?” He turned to Latham. “I don’t want nobody going home feeling like they got a bum deal.”

“They didn’t do that on my account.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“You look upset, though,” Frankie said.

“You know why?” Latham said. “Twenty-four out of twenty-seven hands, that’s how many he won. Twenty-four out of twenty-seven. Seventeen straight at one point.”

Even from across the room Frankie could see the big vein in the side of Latham’s neck throbbing away. Dude was going to have a coronary, he didn’t calm down. Or stroke out, right there in front of them. In a way, it would solve a lot of problems.

“Seventeen?” Frankie said, deciding to let it go. Latham had instigated the fight, of course, tried to spark a little chaos, maybe put himself in a better bargaining position. Rock the boat, so to speak. Not so many years ago, Frankie would have tried to push Latham on it, make him admit what he’d done. “That’s a hell of a run.”

“More than just a good run. Seventeen winning hands in a row doesn’t happen.”

Frankie held up a palm. “I was in Vegas long enough to disagree. It happens more than you might think.”

“Not to me,” Latham said. “Not like that.”

Prower sniffed, took a drink, and looked around the room, his cane on his lap. Hornaday was watching him, nursing his hand but still waiting for a cue. A tough man, as was Kharkov, and no surprise there: They could afford the best. Men like Latham and Prower had contingency plans for every situation. Hell, they had contingency plans for their contingency plans.

“What we have here,” Frankie said, “is a misunderstanding. The deck was straight, the dealers were, well, you two. The way you were hunched over your cards, Richard? Wasn’t no way anybody could get a peek. Even if there was, Hamilton won half of his hands on draw cards.”

“Lady Luck,” Prower said. “She smiled on me, friend. That’s all.”

“That’s all,” Latham snarled. “‘That’s all,’ he says. Shove your false sympathy up your Yankee ass, Prower. You don’t fool me.”

Frankie went to the table and sat down, breathing in the heavy smell of the two men’s sweat, the aftershave that enhanced the BO rather than covering it, all of it overlaid with the Scotch and the coffee and the bitter odor of spent cigars. He glanced at Prower’s pile of chips, then at the empty green felt in front of Latham. “You remember there was a buy-in option.”

Prower frowned, started to speak, and was interrupted by Latham.

“Buy-in? He’s not going to agree to a buy-in. This is the kind of purse you buy lottery tickets for, and now it’s—” Latham was suddenly overwhelmed by a coughing jag, his face turning red as he hacked, flecks of spit spraying the table. He drew in a deep breath, coughed wetly, and then swiped his sleeve across his mouth. “Don’t blow smoke up my ass.”

“No smoke,” Frankie said. To his side, he sensed rather than saw Thor tense, reacting to some movement in either Latham’s or Prower’s ranks. He waited, but whoever had moved must have stopped. “And I never said it had to be unanimous.”

There was silence for a moment. Frankie watched Thor out of the corner of his eye, waiting for a bum rush.

But the only movement was Prower’s lips, puckering to let out a low whistle. “You son of a bitch,” he said to Frankie, not without a trace of admiration. “Let me guess, you’re going to vote yes.”

* * *

“How long you been working for Latham?”

They were in the small cabin that passed for Frankie’s office, Frankie tapping away at his laptop. The rooms were tiny, too small for more than a couple of regular-sized people, and Frankie was starting to feel claustrophobic sharing the room with Thor. At the same time, he liked having the big man around. A wall of humanity between him and the rest of the world.

“Is my first job with him,” Thor said. “And my last, I think.”

“He was a little pissy after you grabbed one of your own guys,” Frankie said. “You want to start fresh?”

“For you?” he asked.

Frankie nodded. “Just for the rest of this trip. After that, I got some private business I need to take care of.”

Thor looked at him steadily. “I have a contract. The check comes after we get off the ship.”

Frankie glanced at the screen and tapped refresh. He liked the way it looked, all those digits in his account, the way the cents at the end of the balance made it look even bigger. He could remember back when he was starting out, everything he wanted had a price tag with more digits in it than what he had available. Sometimes one place more, usually two or three. It was his philosophy, occasionally vocalized:
I need more digits.

They had thought it was a funny line to repeat to him, sitting there in the desert holding his bloody hand.
There’re yer digits, Frankie. Scoop ’em up.

Now, though. Now he had enough to do the stuff he needed to do, the things he wanted to do, too.

He tapped refresh on the browser window, and the leading digit on his account went from a two to a three.

“And there we go,” he said. There were eight digits, counting the thirty-seven cents. Somewhere in the past, not long ago, those thirty-seven cents would have mattered to him, would have been part of his inventory. “Let’s check the others.”

“It’s not like I want to,” Thor said as Frankie logged out, ran a security scan, and began typing in his passwords into the Deutchsbank log-in screen. “But I have family, back in old country. Mr. Latham, there is still a chance he will pay.”

“That goddamn family thing,” Frankie said. “Gets you every time, don’t it? I hear ya, bro. I hear ya.” He plucked a napkin out of the coffee tray, pulled a pen from his jacket pocket, and set it on the desk in front of Thor. “If Mr. Latham was going to write you that check, what would it look like? Say if he was real happy with you, put in a big fat tip?”

Thor frowned for a moment, not in confusion, then scribbled down a number and pushed the napkin back to Frankie. Frankie brought the napkin up, raising his eyebrows at the number, pretending to think about it. How the hell did Latham succeed in the business world? Paying peanuts, when anybody could see Thor was good, fast and efficient and about the right amount of smart. Like a well-trained bear.

Frankie opened his wallet and counted out hundreds until he reached Thor’s number, then added five more. “You really will have a tip at the end, things go like they have been. Understand? And I been known to tip real good. Ask the bartender, Remy. He’ll vouch.”

Thor took the bills, folding them into a money clip. “I believe you,
chef
.”

“Don’t get too trusting, big guy. This is business, not just . . .” He squinted at the screen, and then his face relaxed. “Ah, there we go,” Frankie said. He closed out the Deutschbank account, running the numbers in his head, adding up the cash he had already taken custody of. Even after he was done in Ohio, there was enough that he could buy a place, get the boat, drink the good stuff until his liver didn’t know anything else existed. “We good, Thor?”

“Yes,” Thor said.

“Latham doesn’t have to know about our deal. No need to cut ties, you understand?”

“Of course,
chef
.”

“All right, then,” Frankie said. “Apologize to him, say whatever you big men say when you have to grovel. Let him abuse you, he wants to. If it still needs to be cleared up, I’ll take care of it. But get the game started.” He rapped on the wall of the room. “I got a feeling, this old piece of shit is going to be headed to harbor sooner rather than later.”

* * *

After Thor left, Frankie closed down his laptop and put it in his locked briefcase. Then he opened the duffel bag in the closet, cleared away the dirty socks and underwear on top, and felt for the hidden zipper on the bottom.

The bottom of the duffel bag was lined with bands of hundred-dollar bills. The modern way to do business was online banking and offshore accounts, sure, but it was old school to distrust those little electronic numbers. He’d been clear on his payment terms: seventy-five percent deposited in offshore accounts, the remaining quarter cash on the barrelhead.

He stowed the duffel and the laptop back in the closet, then went into the bathroom and splashed water on his face. He looked into the mirror, checked his teeth, ran a hand back through his hair. “It’s a whale,” he said to his reflection, seeing how it looked, coming out of his mouth.

Good enough for the rubes on this ship, maybe. He wouldn’t want to say it to the Coast Guard, or a cop.

He filled his cupped hands with water and brought it over his face, slowly, letting the chemical-scented water cool his skin. It was all still under control. Thor was one of those rare gifts, an underappreciated man easily bought. Prower was a better cardplayer than Frankie had anticipated, one of those guys that made it look easy, like it really was luck. Now Latham was ready to throw away another million, convinced he could make the comeback of the century. Well, shit, anything was possible.

He let the water fall into the sink and looked up at the mirror again. Anything was possible, he’d heard that so many times, but . . .

“But I wouldn’t bet on it,” he said.

He straightened, patted his face dry, sniffed an armpit. Still pretty good. He exited the room, locked it, and waited for a moment to see if there were any sounds coming from the game room. Nothing he could hear, just the soft voice of Remy, his voice nice and calm. The game must have already started.

He turned down the hallway, past the rows of empty rooms, the doors open, per his direction. He took a left and saw Christie was in his chair, head nodding a bit over some medical journal, his face loose and drawn with fatigue.

“I didn’t sign on for this,” he said. “Sit around all day . . .”

Frankie ignored him, reaching into his pocket for the key card. He unlocked the door, turned the knob, and cocked an eyebrow at Christie.

“Go ahead,” Christie said. “He’s sedated.”

The room passed for a master suite on this level, maybe twelve feet square, a desk and dresser on one side, a twin bed on the other. There was a thin shape on the bed, blankets pulled partway over the torso. Frankie flipped on the main lights and the shape stirred, legs twitching. The room smelled like piss.

“Wake up, Cesar,” Frankie said softly.

The shape stirred again, rolled over.
“¿Que?”

“Go on, clear out the cobwebs.
Comprendes?
I want you to hear me clearly.”

The man sat up and immediately bent over, hands pressed to his temples. He was Hispanic and thin, medium height, faded tattoos along his forearms and on the inside of his wrists. His black hair was close cut, running back thick and heavy from a clear, high brow. His eyes, somewhat clouded by the opiates Christie had administered, looked up from between his hands, trying to focus on Frankie. His wrists were bound by thick plastic zip ties.

“You like the sea life, Cesar?”

Cesar rubbed his temples. He had a large bruise along his swollen left jawbone, and his knuckles were scraped red, his right ring finger swollen like a sausage.

“You’re a guest, think of it that way. Okay? Good. Hey, I got some news for you.”

“Yes?” Cesar’s voice was low, pleasant. “We on a ship, that the news?”

“He talks,” Frankie said. “Listen, I saved your ass, Cesar. If Cappero had his way, you’d be pushing out the asshole of one of his Rottweilers about now. They’d be chewing on your bones in the backyard of his little estate,
hombre
, and when the dogs were done chewing, Cappero would have a bonfire. Pile up the bones, add some kerosene. Then puff, up in smoke, no more Cesar, like you never been. That sound about right?”

Cesar’s face sagged a little. “You know Cappy?”

“That’s what you used to do, wasn’t it?” Frankie asked. “Take care of his dirty work, let the dogs do their thing? Don’t look surprised, everyone knew you were Cappy’s dog man. I ain’t judging, I was born south of the border maybe I’d of ended up a dog man, too.” Frankie shook his head. “Your buddy Mariana, he already met the dogs.”