“Hack fronted everything. The Holiday Inn, the Hertz car—he’s the one has a credit card. The deal didn’t go down.” Sandy shrugged. “So what. Why’s he so hincky with me? Toledo wasn’t my idea. This ain’t our line of work, that’s what I told him.…”
“Telephone for Doug Whitenaur. Mr. D?”
The waitress handed the phone to Doug and said, “Make it quick, okay? This is a business phone.”
“Uh-huh.” Whitenaur took the phone into a corner to hear better.
“Mister Whitenaur? This is Nelson. Sergeant Nelson. Police Department.”
“Speak up. We’re having a party here.”
“Whitenaur! That man’s here after his dog again! Lewis Burkholder!”
Though the policeman’s voice was loud, Doug held the earpiece glued to his ear like grim death. “What? … He? … When?”
“Right about now. He just left the station. Probably on his way to your house.”
“Oh God!” Doug felt the champagne washing around his belly lining. “Why, well, stop him!”
“Man claims you got his dog. Man drove all the way from Virginia because he claims you stole it. He had that other guy, his son-in-law, with him.”
“Arrest him!”
Bored. “He hasn’t broke any laws. I shouldn’t be calling you. Why should I give a damn? Talk to your lawyer. Maybe your lawyer can arrest him.” Clunk. And the buzz of the phone was louder than Nelson’s voice had been. Whitenaur’s ear was red and he wiped the sweaty instrument on his pants leg.
The way his heart was pounding, Doug Whitenaur hoped he wasn’t having a heart attack. He took slow, deliberate breaths. It’s interesting to note he went directly to Hack, not to Sandy.
The look Hack gave him was neutral and cold.
“Hack, I need to talk.”
Hack’s dip of the shoulder meant “So, talk.”
“Hack, I got trouble and I want to hire you guys to make it right, but we can’t talk in here and you can’t sit around playing hard-to-get. Follow me.”
And, somewhat to Hack’s surprise, he found himself following Doug Whitenaur outside into the parking lot. “I understand you could use some fast cash,” Whitenaur began.
Hack clenched the plastic champagne glass in his hand, just popped it into pieces.
“Five hundred for you and five hundred for Sandy. Both of you. There’s two of them so I’ll want two of you and you’ll have to get over to my house fast as you can. I want that dog out of there. If they don’t find the dog, they can’t do squat. No dog, no evidence.”
“Whoa now, slow down, Mr. D. Just what …”
“I told you before. I had that dog stolen. Hack, you’re such a wise guy. ‘Buy the dog, Mr. D. They already tossed your place, they won’t do it again.’ Well, wise guy, the dog’s owner is on his way to my place right now and if he finds that dog, I got trouble.” His laugh was a whinny. “Oh boy, I got trouble.”
“Cool your jets, partner.”
“I wouldn’t have the dog if you hadn’t opened your smart mouth! This key fits my kennel. Take it. Take it. There’s two dogs, a bitch and a male. It’s the male you want. Don’t get the bitch by mistake. I’m running the bitch at the Bluegrass. Take the male.”
Hack said, “You want me to steal your five-thousand-dollar dog?”
“I don’t want that dog in Cincinnati. I don’t want that dog within a thousand miles. I don’t want to hear about that dog again.” He closed his eyes. When he opened them, he was very reasonable. “All right. I made a mistake buying the dog. Get rid of him.”
“You haven’t spent all your five hundred yet.”
Doug spoke through his teeth. His eyes were big as frog’s eyes. “Burkholder and his buddy. This is the second time they traveled all the way here to make trouble and I am sick of it.”
“We don’t do hits. I don’t know what you heard about me and Sandy, but we don’t do that kind of work. Somebody wants a little protection, somebody’s having a tough time with his collections—that’s what we do. Sometimes we …”
“Don’t kill them! God, what do you take me for?”
Hack swallowed his spontaneous answer. He was pretty broke. “Seven fifty for me. You got to have Sandy?”
“There isn’t time to get anyone else.”
“Five hundred for Sandy. We could go out to your place and take care of the dog and if we was to find anyone trespassing out there, I suppose we could … discourage them.”
Doug’s eyes were frantic. “I haven’t got cash. Cards. I got a gold American Express.…”
Hack allowed himself to be amused. “We don’t generally take plastic.” He patted Doug’s arm in quite a familiar way. “I’ll bet you’re good for the money. I don’t suppose we could borrow your car. Sandy’s car is in the shop again.” And Hack waited until Doug Whitenaur laid the keys of his expensive silver sportscar right in his palm.
Nop was weary and he was sore. Bit wanted to play. She romped around him, gruffing and growling, grinning her silly grin.
She barked and sang, “Thou art he. He thou art. He art thee.”
Nop whimpered. He wasn’t that sore but he wanted sympathy.
“Poor Nop.” All kindness, she lay down beside him and helped him groom himself.
With good appetite, she ate from the red plastic bowl. When she had it empty, she teased it on its edge so it would roll—a toy. She batted it, pounced. With mock ferocity, she worried the empty plastic dish.
Both dogs heard the footsteps coming around back. Nop’s ears cocked like hairtriggers. Unfamiliar steps. Both dogs settled down to bark. Bit loudest, because it was her home.
“Shut your yap!” Hack snapped.
“Yeah,” Sandy agreed.
Nop sat back on his haunches and snarled. Bit backed from the kennel gate growling disapproval. “Which one’s the girl? Whitenaur said to take the male.”
“How should I know? There, the one in the corner.” Sandy hunkered down and crooned. “Good doggy. Nice doggy.”
The dogs settled down to a determined steady alarm.
“Get in there. You’re the one likes dogs. You get him.”
Sandy stepped cautiously inside and unclipped a dog lead that hung beside the gate.
“Come here,” he said in a soft voice. Nop was dubious but Bit came right over and climbed all over Sandy, licking his face until he was slick.
Sandy offered his fingertips and, stiff-legged, Nop came over for a sniff. This man was friendly, and yet, and yet …
“Grab hold of him,” Hack advised.
“Nice dog. Good dog.” Sandy slipped his hand under Nop’s collar and lifted his forefeet off the ground so he couldn’t bite.
Hack swung the door wide. Bit ran to the rear of the kennel, growling, and Sandy yanked Nop outside.
“Don’t you let go of him.”
“He’ll be all right as soon as I get him on this leash.”
And so it was. When Nop felt the familiar pull at his collar, he retreated into his customary obedience.
Bit whined. Nop dug in his heels and threw her a look: her beautiful fur, her gay tail, her muzzle.
“Come on now, doggy.”
Nop got right on the floorboards, on the passenger side, and laid his muzzle on Hack’s foot. It was how Nop always traveled but Hack didn’t know that. “Dog trusts me. How stupid can you get.”
Sandy was revving and gear shifting and driving quite sportily. He was happy as a clam. “What a great car! Just great! When we get this over with, maybe we can take a little spin. I told you Mr. D would come through for us.”
Hack thought Sandy looked like a college kid. He thought Sandy looked like a jerk. “Are you the one who likes dogs? Weren’t you the one who had a cute little Collie once? How long did you say you cried when that dog got killed? I forgot. Was it two days? Three days? Come on, you can tell me.”
Sandy said, “Aw, Hack! Don’t!” He slowed the car.
They were in the rough part of town and the pavement was broken and full of pothole
s. Storefront churches, chili joints, low bars—all the usual commerce of street life.
Hack mocked, “ ‘Aw, Hack! Don’t,’” making the words sound like a little girl was speaking them. God, he hated sentimentalists. Sentimentalists wore their hearts on their sleeves until the deal went down and those same hearts—just try and find those hearts then. Hack had had some experience with sentimentalists.
“How about here?” Sandy pulled into the mouth of an alley. Piles and heaps of broken cartons, toppled garbage cans. Two green dumpsters were labeled for the exclusive use of Holman’s Bakery. Sandy left the motor running. “This is as good a place as any,” he advised.
For the sheer hell of it, Hack didn’t make a move. He popped a Turns. His foot was warmed by the dog’s jaw.
“Well, you gonna do it?”
Hack let his disgust leak through his eyes until Sandy looked away. Sandy said, “I’ll hold him until you get a tire iron. Must be a tire iron in the trunk.”
Standing beside the car, Hack whacked the tire iron into his hand. Whap.
Nervously, Sandy said, “Man, get it over with. We got to get back to Mr. D’s house and bounce those two farmers.”
Whap.
Nop got very excited. He showed his teeth. Sandy said, “See, look at him. He’s a bad dog. Real bad.” He had Nop’s collar and was pressing him against the floorboards. Nop struggled in earnest, but a forty-pound dog can’t escape a hundred-eighty-pound man and Nop’s mouth was smeared with cigarette butts and floor filth.
When Hack dragged Nop out of the car, he held something. A bad thing.
Nop couldn’t slip the choke collar. Though his feet were dug in and his claws scraped and hooked the cobblestones, the leash dragged him forward. Nop’s teeth were bared and he was very frightened.
“Nice doggy. I ain’t gonna hurt you. Come here, doggy.”
His claws clicked in the alleyway. High walls on either side. Piles of rubbish, higher than a man—higher than any man, even his old master. Hack steadily dragging him through the spill behind a big square dumpster, overflowing, redolent.
“Hurry it,” Sandy yelled.
“Just a little farther. Nice doggy,” Hack murmured, his eyes boring into Nop’s and the bad thing—a black rod with a bend in it—the bad thing hanging from his hand.
Rags, pile of tin cans. Broken glass. Breathing rags. Paper bags. Burst paper bags.
Nop bolted past Hack and hit the end of the leash with his whole body’s weight and strength, and it was enough to jerk the end of the lead out of Hack’s hand, almost.
Nop flipped on his back. He had no more wind in him.
Breathing rags.
Hack lifted the bad thing in the air.
Back at the car, Sandy shading his eyes. “Get it over with,” he yelled.
“Dog,” Hack said quietly, “you got guts.”
Nop had no more breath for escape or defiance. He looked up.
The bad thing rose and fell. Rose and fell. The noise was awful and there was more noise when Hack hurled it into the garbage.
When Hack came back into the sunlight, Sandy said, “Where’s Mr. D’s tire iron?”
“Don’t press your luck,” Hack said.
If Lewis had been watching when “Wide World of Sports” featured the Littlest Buckaroos, perhaps things would have turned out differently, but Lewis never saw the show and when Ethel called to say she’d seen Nop in a rodeo, Nop had already been with Doug Whitenaur for three weeks. Things moved quickly then. Ethel called the president of the rodeo association (an old friend) and, shortly, Lewis had T. T. Raines on the phone.
T.T. had nothing to hide. “Sure I bought that dog from Grady Gumm, fair and square. And I sold him to Doug Whitenaur. Made a few dollars on the deal, if you got to know.”
Trembling with excitement, Lewis thanked the man. He grinned. He whooped. He did a jig of sheer joy. How rare it was to be this happy, like a kid again. Joy throughout his whole laughing body.
The women needed the pickup, so next morning the two men rolled toward Ohio in Mark’s old VW. Lewis slept most of the way. The excitement had taken a lot out of him.
Lewis didn’t expect much help from the Cincinnati P.D. and got less. Sergeant Nelson didn’t want to hear about Lewis’s stolen dog and wouldn’t listen to what Lewis had to say about Doug Whitenaur.
“Whitenaur is a big man in this town,” Nelson had said. “You just stay away from him.”
Well, that made Lewis hot and he said some things to Sergeant Nelson that maybe he shouldn’t have. And when he stormed out of the police station he was still hot, got lost in traffic, crossed the river to the Kentucky side and it was ninety minutes later when he finally pulled into Doug Whitenaur’s driveway and parked behind the silver DeLorean.
In the course of his affairs, Lewis Burkholder had upended rams, wrestled hogs, pinned calves and subdued a crazy-hurt horse or two. But today was the first time he fought a human being since he was in the service, some thirty years ago.
TEN
Strays
“What kind of a man is that? What kind of a man? Oh, this noise, this shouting.” She pressed her hands to her ears. Nop cocked his head, curiously.
She looked and smelled like an old woman. Her sorrowful feet burst through the sides of her tennis shoes and her red hair lay flat and wispy against her skull.
“Such a man. Such a terrible man. To bring a doggy here, to my resting place; my place by the warm grate from Holman’s Bakery and raise the club high up and smash the garbage. Crazy world.” She rocked and moaned.
Nop lay where Hack had pushed him down, belly flat on the cobblestones. The leash was wrapped around the dumpster leg, and scattered, flattened garbage lay where Hack had killed it with crushing blows. Nop was panting. He knew the blows had been meant for him.
She looked like a pile of rags. Like she was no more than one of her own flopping, bulging shopping bags. Her eyes were green and shot with redness and tired.
“Doggy, what am I to do? Perhaps the crazy will come back? With crazies, you never can tell.” She shook an admonitory finger at Nop, who responded with a weak wag of his tail. She was rattling on—rudely awakened and terrified by the senseless attack on the privacy she’d reserved for herself among the overflowing garbage cans and trash. “Doggy. Doggy. I had a nice doggy once. I called … I can’t remember what I called the doggy. Jack hated the doggy.” She leaned close to confide, “Jack was the one took my doggy up on the roof and threw him off, though he always claimed it was an accident that my doggy just wandered too close to the edge.” She paused. “You have the same eyes my doggy had. Kind and sweet.”
She rolled onto her hands and knees and pushed, arthritically, to her feet. “I ain’t stayin’ here,” she said, shaking her head vigorously. “No siree. This was a place once: safe and warm, and I haven’t been attacked in this neighborhood but it’s ruined now.” She rubbed the place off her hands. “Ruined,” she said, passing final judgment.
She hooked the twine handles of her bags on her arms—she adjusted herself.
“What day is it?” she asked Nop. “If it’s Thursday, I’ll have my SSI check at the Belvedere, but if it’s Wednesday, I’ll make the trip for nothing and I hate that. Well, I won’t name names, but that Negro behind the desk, he’s as bad as my husband Jack. Worse!”
Nop didn’t know what day it was but he wagged again, vigorously, to show his concern. She paid him no mind, just walked on past, tottering on the uneven cobblestones.
Though Nop whined, she didn’t turn around. When she turned out of the alley, he barked. He jerked on his lead, jerked again. He dug at the leash with his claws and the hurried knot fell apart. Nop raced after the woman he’d chosen, his metal leash bouncing and jangling behind him. She hadn’t gotten far. Nop streaked past a couple pedestrians and skidded to a stop beside her. She didn’t look at him.
It’s hard to say why dogs pick friends, but in his heart, Nop was sure he’d picked one. He just had to make her see it hi
s way. He smiled. He walked handsomely. He was very charming. He wished she’d pick up the lead.
“Doggy,” she muttered. “I ain’t got no doggy. My husband, Jack, killed my doggy. Tried to kill me too. I’m too poor to have a doggy. You find yourself someone else.”
Nop adjusted himself to her slow pace. It gave him plenty of time to look around, to inspect the street and the street life: loafers and hookers, hustlers and housewives returning from the convenience stores with groceries clutched protectively under their arms. A couple disco skaters spun by on rubber wheels, oblivious, headphones covering their ears.
More people looked at Nop than looked at the woman. People didn’t like to see the woman because they were afraid she’d ask for something beyond their powers. Nop walked very close to the woman, at heel, so none could mistake his affiliation. He had chosen this woman on the strength of something buried deep in her green eyes.
She spoke to an audience of her own. She spoke about her husband, Jack, who’d been a sailor when she met him (“Just the cutest little sailor boy. And his baby blues, oh, I never could resist him”). She said it had been a love match. She also said it had been accursed. She waited at each corner for the light to change and sometimes hadn’t reached the far curb when the light changed again. Her dress rustled; her broken shoes scuffed. She paused at a wire trash basket and fished through it.
“Nothin’ today, Susie Q.” The hotdog vendor, whose cart occupied the corner, called to her, “I ain’t got rid of yesterday’s buns yet.”
She grumbled.
“That your dog, Susie? Why don’t you leave him with me and I’ll heat him up! Yeah, I’ll turn him into a real hotdog.”
Susie Q (for so she was called by others and herself) waited patiently.
“All right,” the vendor said. “All right. I was just gonna throw them away anyway.” With more generosity than grace he handed her two stale hotdog buns.
“My teeth,” she mumbled. “You know how it is.”
“Yeah. I know.” He was looking away, like he was hoping to spy a customer, but it was because he couldn’t stand watching her eat. It was the same thing every day. If he threw the buns away, she fished them out again. If she was early, she got them before they got thrown away. She said she couldn’t eat hotdogs.