Vultures

by Chuck Wendig

  “I was going to. But you were hurt.”

  I’m not hurt anymore. “I don’t like surprises.”

  “And if I told you about him before we got here, you wouldn’t ever have talked to him.” Then, under her own breath, Gabby says, “Not that you gave him a chance anyway.”

  “You’re mad.”

  “I’m not mad.”

  “You’re pissed, you were literally just yelling at me.”

  “I’m . . . not, it’s fine.”

  But it isn’t fine.

  Shit.

  Miriam sighs. “You have every right to be pissed.”

  “What?”

  “I ditched you. I went to Florida, you went your way with Isaiah, and I ditched your ass. I got back with Louis. I got into a world of shit, I got myself—ah-ha, miracle of miracles—knocked up again, and then I put it all on you. Here I am again, like a boat anchor chained to your ankle as we sink into the dark water together. I’m sorry. I don’t say that enough, even though that saying it doesn’t fix anything anyway.” She sighs again. “I’m genuinely sorry, Gabs, for putting this all on you again, out of nowhere.”

  Gabby uncrosses her arms. She regards Miriam with a dubious up-and-down look. “Little Miriam’s starting to grow up.”

  “Don’t get too excited. I’m still asking for your help. And I’m still willing to bludgeon you for that cigarette you’re pretending you didn’t smoke out there.”

  “And I’ll still give it to you. The help, not the smoke.”

  “Don’t help me. You shouldn’t. You should fuck off as fast as your feet will carry you. Go back to your sister. Go help her raise Isaiah. Go back to the Keys. Go find an island or a mountain or an underground volcanic lair as far away from me as you can.”

  Gabby comes and sits next to her. She takes Miriam’s hand. Her hand is warm even as Miriam’s is cold. “Let’s agree to get past the point where you remind me how bad you are, then I remind you how good I am, and we dance around it back and forth until the next time. Maybe I’m a sucker. Maybe I need you as much as you need me. I don’t know and I don’t care. So let’s skip ahead to the part where I agree to help you however you need me to help you.”

  “I need help.”

  “I know. That’s why I brought the nice man from the FBI.”

  “He wasn’t that nice.”

  “Well, if you don’t want to work with them, I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

  “I don’t know either. I have no money. I have no one. My mother is gone. I got Grosky killed. Louis is dead.” I only left Wren alive because I couldn’t stand to lose someone else. “I had an owl, and now the owl is gone. I don’t know what to do, Gabby. I usually have a way forward, but now . . .”

  That admission—with it, even as her eyes burn with the threat of fresh tears, it feels like a giant wooden beam across her shoulders is gone. A weight leaves her. She doesn’t feel buoyant. She doesn’t feel happy. But she feels somehow relieved. Somehow unburdened.

  She lays her head on Gabby’s shoulder.

  Gabby strokes her hair. “We’ll figure it out together.”

  I hope so, Miriam thinks. Gabby is a single bright tightrope hanging over a chasm of corpses and darkness. Miriam’s hand, still holding Gabby’s, goes to her middle and stays there for a while.

  PART THREE

  * * *

  KEYS AND LOCKS

  ELEVEN

  SNOWBIRDS

  THEN.

  “It’s hot,” Miriam says, arm out the car door. Sweat drips down to her elbow and dangles there like a rock climber about to plunge to his death. They’re pulled off, the car idling in an empty parking lot. On one side is the ocean. On the other is a small, run-down, sun-bleached office building, two-story. Above, gulls turn in the sky as if tethered to the clouds.

  “It’s Florida,” Gabby says.

  “I know, but it’s winter.”

  “I know, but it’s Florida.”

  “I fucking hate Florida.”

  “Then you should stop coming back here.”

  Gabs has a good point. It’s been a week since the non-motel motel in Maryland. Miriam was lost, with no idea where to go or what to do. Gabby said: I know people in the Keys. People who can keep them off the radar for a while. Miriam said it sounded like a bad idea, though really that was just because Florida reminded her of her mother, and of Grosky, and also Florida is hotter and wetter than the foul sauna that is a pro wrestler’s ass-crack.

  So, they came down this way, and Gabby talked to a retired fisherman who knew her Uncle Charlie, and he got them a pretty cheap deal on a houseboat rental up in Key Largo. It’s about the size of a shoebox (with the shoes still in it), and Miriam can barely sleep, what with the way the damn thing dips and bobs like the head of a blackout drunk, but . . .

  (It is what it is, her mother’s ghost says from the recesses of Miriam’s memory. A grosser, sharper version of Lord, give me the strength to accept the things I cannot change.)

  After they got settled in, Miriam said, “I need to see a doctor.”

  Gabby asked if it was about the injury under her arm, which Miriam said by way of a lie: “No, that’s . . . um, healing up fine, it’s not as bad as it looked.” She’s been sticking a couple bandages there to fake it, as right now she really doesn’t want to broach the subject to Gabby. Mostly because she has no idea what to say, or if it’s even real. She only has time right now for one bit of bizarre bullshit, and that ain’t it. “I need to go to Tatooine, meet up with Obi-Gyn Kenobi, get these Skywalker twins checked out.” She patted her belly. Then in a Yoda voice, she said, “Always two there are.”

  “Your pop culture game is on point today,” Gabby said. “But if you’re talking about getting a baby doctor to look at your . . .” Gabby gestured toward Miriam’s stomach the way you might dismissively gesture at a knocked-over trash can or a dog licking its own parts. “Then I can’t help you. A claustrophobic houseboat I can manage. Baby doctor, not so much.”

  Miriam thought going to the hospital wouldn’t be a good idea, since, ohhh, she was maybe kinda sorta a fugitive from justice? Gabby reminded her: “We could still take the Fed job. We wouldn’t have to do this dance.”

  “I don’t trust them,” Miriam reminded in a singsongy voice. “I haven’t had a lot of luck with authority figures, let’s remember. The Caldecott cop. Grosky and his partner on the first go-round. Harriet and Frankie pretended to be Feds. My trust levels here are at an all time low.”

  “Fine, but we need to find someone. You can’t do this alone.”

  Miriam thought, I need an off-the-books doctor. Maybe like a veterinarian or a boat mechanic who also happens to have studied the human uterus in his spare time. Or maybe a mob doctor.

  Mob doctor.

  That was an interesting thought.

  She knew someone who might know someone.

  And with that, Miriam used a burner they bought outside of Miami to call her old neighbor, Rita Shermansky. Rita, who lived near Miriam’s mother near Fort Lauderdale, maybe-sorta-half-ass confessed to being mobbed up once upon a time. Though maybe the Jewish mob, if that was a thing? Whatever. Point is, Rita was people who seemed to know people, and since she helped Miriam run a scam where they stole pills from old people (correction: dead old people) and sold them to other living old people. Rita answered the phone like no big deal: Oh, it’s you.

  “You back, doll?” Rita asked. “Didn’t see you here. And I been watching.”

  “No, I’m not back. I’m . . . in some trouble.”

  “You ain’t just in some trouble; you are some trouble.” There’s the crispy sound of her dragging on a Virginia Slim. “Explains why they had some people pokin’ around your place. I told them to fuck off, chased one of them with a tiki torch.”

  “They didn’t arrest you?”

  Rita laughed a rheumy, phlegmatic laugh. “I’m just a crazy old cunt; they don’t want to deal with me in handcuffs.”

  “I need your help.”
/>   “Say the word.”

  Miriam said she needed a doctor. Someone who could deal with a pregnancy.

  “Like, deal-deal with it? Snip and flush?”

  “No. A real doctor.”

  “You’re knocked up?”

  “I think I’m knocked up.”

  Another laugh. “Guess you can’t run from life now, huh, doll?”

  “I guess the fuck not.”

  “I’ll make some calls. I’ll get you a guy.”

  A day later, Rita gave her a name and address.

  The name: Richard Beagle.

  The address: off the Overseas Highway in Tavernier, here in the Keys.

  “Dick Beagle,” Miriam said to Gabby with a shrug. And, she noted, no MD, no OB-GYN. Just Dick Beagle. Like a guy who would sell you a 1998 Ford Escort without a VIN.

  And now, that’s where they are. In a dingy lot framed by the sea and by a sandblasted office building. A lone fast food cup rolls past.

  “What’s the plan?” Gabby asks.

  “I dunno. Go in, see what Dick Beagle, Baby Doctor Extraordinaire, has to say about things.”

  “This is sketchy.”

  “Then it’s right in line with the rest of my life.”

  “You okay?”

  She forces a smile. “All peaches and cream.”

  Gabby cuts the engine.

  And with that, they get out of the car.

  TWELVE

  THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID

  The way in requires a buzzer. Miriam buzzes.

  No one answers.

  Miriam buzzes again.

  And still, no one answers.

  “Shit goddamnit shit,” Miriam says.

  “Maybe because it’s—” Gabby starts to say, but then the door opens.

  The man standing there looks like he’s been awakened from a nap. He’s got the air of an old hippie, but also like a shaggy sheepdog? Fuzzy long hair hangs in gray ringlets. Tired eyes sit pinched behind a pair of round spectacles. He scratches at the woolly beard framing his jowls.

  “What?” he says, obviously irritated.

  “Are you Dick Beagle?” Miriam asks.

  “Richard. Or Rich. Or Richie.” Irritated, he adds, “But never Dick.”

  Miriam snort-laughs and jerks a thumb toward Gabby. “That’s what she said.” Gabby frowns. Never-Dick frowns, too. “Because she’s a lesbian. You know, a lady who likes ladies? So, ‘never dick,’ get it?”

  “Whaddya want?” Never-Dick asks, his irritation rising.

  “A friend of a friend referred me here. Said you’re a doctor, or—” She says it again with vigorous air quotes. “A doc-tor. I have an, um, situation?”

  She pats her belly, then winks.

  “And you picked today to come see me,” he says.

  “Yeah, why?”

  “It’s Christmas.”

  She frowns. “It is not.” Then, to Gabby: “Wait, is it Christmas?”

  “I’ve told you like, three times already today.”

  “Oh. Oh.” She sighs. To Never-Dick she says, “I’m sorry. Shouldn’t you be . . . out with your family or something?”

  “No, I’m Jewish. Later today I’ll screw off, go get some lo mein and beef with broccoli from Chang’s Dynasty, maybe watch an old movie. And I don’t have a family. At least none that talk to me, so thanks for that.”

  “I didn’t screw up your family.”

  “No, but you had to bring it up, and now I’m sad.”

  “Go cry it out and then let’s talk. If you don’t have a family, I don’t see the problem with me coming to see you today.”

  He shrugs. “It’s still Christmas.”

  “Listen, it’s hot out here; can you help me or not?”

  “Five hundred.”

  “Five hundred what? Seashells? Bottlecaps?”

  “Dollars. You want in, it’s five hundo, lady.”

  “I don’t have five hundred bucks.”

  “Then you don’t have a way in this door.” And he starts to close it—but Miriam sticks her off-brand Doc Marten through the gap, then nudge-kicks it back open. Never-Dick protests: “Hey!”

  “We got like—” To Gabby: “What do we have? How much?”

  “Maybe fifty bucks.”

  “We have fifty bucks. Ten percent. I can get you the rest later.”

  He scowls. “No. The price is the price. Whoever you talked to shoulda told you that. No negotiating. No wiggle room. None of this ten percent down business—I’m not a furniture store and you’re not buying a mahogany nightstand.”

  “Rita didn’t say anything about—”

  “Rita. Rita who?”

  “Rita, Rita Shermansky.”

  He stiffens. A bulge forms in his throat that he forcibly swallows. “Shermansky.” Never-Dick waggles his tongue between the sides of his open mouth, his brow knitting into a cat’s cradle of worry. “Shermansky. Okay. Okay. Come in.”

  “Come in?”

  “Yeah, Merry Christmas, come on in.”

  THIRTEEN

  A BAT IN THE CAVE

  It’s like if a doctor’s office fucked a shitty studio apartment and this is the room that was born of such crass mating. It’s got a desk and a pile of papers, but it’s also obviously where Richard “Never-Dick” Beagle sleeps. There’s a pull-out couch, a little hot plate, a TV on a small card table playing a Price Is Right rerun. A puppy pad sits nearby, with a freshly poured lake of urine slowly soaking in. The puppy that made it is nowhere to be found, so Miriam is left wondering if Beagle here doesn’t have a bathroom and instead just chooses to piss on the floor like an animal.

  He uses the heel of his foot—which she notices now is barely contained inside a bright-orange rubber Croc, easily the ugliest sandal to ever fit a human appendage—to drag out the chair. Gabby gestures for Miriam to sit before grabbing the second one.

  Beagle sits down across from them and plants both elbows on his desk. He puts his hands together and sinks his chin into the hammock formed by his bent fingers. “So, whaddya got? You got a bat in the cave you want removed?” He must see her blank, slightly horrified stare. “I mean, you want an abortion? That’s what you’re here for, right?”

  “No,” Miriam says, grimacing.

  “No,” Gabby adds forcefully.

  “No?” he asks. “Then why are you here? Usually, you come to me, you get an abortion, and not even because they’re illegal—though the assholes who run this country sure want it back that way—it’s just because I’m discreet and nobody needs to know. No lawsuits from abusive boyfriends, no problem with parents, nada. So, why me?”

  Something slithers around Miriam’s legs.

  She jumps up out of her chair, yelping.

  Beagle shrugs. “Sorry, that’s Rex, probably.”

  A bald, wrinkled extraterrestrial rodent peeks out from under the chair in which Miriam was sitting. It’s got a mouth full of heinous fuckery, with no one tooth pointing the same direction as any other individual tooth. Its top lip curls back, as if to give a greater look at those gnarly chompers. One eye is rheumy with a cataract—the eye looks like pondwater with a pale corpse hidden deep underneath the algae-scum surface. The other eye is . . . ennhhyeah, fine, except for the part where it bulges out like a marble, staring past a puff of Muppet hair coming off the top of its wrinkly scrotum head.

  The rat-thing pants with a tongue far too long for its mouth. Like a businessman whose tie is far too wide and far too long.

  “What the shit is that thing?” Miriam asks.

  “It’s a dog.”

  “It’s so not a dog.”

  “It’s a dog.”

  “It’s a fucking horror movie is what it is.”

  “It’s a Chinese crested. It’s fine. He’s friendly. Sit.”

  She sits back down, but the dog doesn’t move. It just hangs out under her chair, staring off at nothing with that one “good” eye.

  “You’re pregnant and you want to have the kid,” Beagle says.

  “N
o, I don’t want to have the kid.”

  “But you said no abortion.”

  “Right, no abortion.”

  He itches the top of his nose. “You want the kid, then.”

  “No,” she says, flummoxed. “I don’t want the kid, but I need the kid. I’m having the kid and I need to know that it’s healthy and . . . Listen, I don’t want an abortion, I’m having the kid, so—” She clamps her teeth together because all of this is very hard to say and even harder to think about at all and she’d much rather not have to worry about any of this thank-you-very-much but here she is and this is happening. “So help me.”

  “You know you’re pregnant? For sure?”

  “I peed on one of those plastic sticks. It gave me the double plus.”

  “And why not go to a real doctor, again?”

  “Because I’m a criminal.”

  Not missing a beat, he says, “Whaddya do?”

  “Nothing good.”

  He sighs. “All right. Time to get you in the stirrups.”

  “Wait, what?” Miriam panics, looks to Gabby. “I’m not—no, I’m not doing that. Not here. This is just a, a . . . whaddyacallit. A consult.”

  “Yeah, and that means getting you in the stirrups.”

  “You try to get me in the stirrups, I’ll stick that Muppet rat-monster dog of yours right up your old hippie ass.”

  A soft touch from Gabby refocuses her. “Miriam. If you want to get checked out, this is the way. But if you want to leave, we can leave.”

  Her gaze flits from Gabby to Beagle, from Beagle to Gabby. Her heartbeat kicks up like hoofbeats. Even though it’s cooler in here than it is outside, she finds herself sweating anew. “Fine,” she says.