DINGO

2006-02-07T17:41:00.000-08:00

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 27: Animal Spirit Guide

2006-02-02T17:09:00.000-08:00

Here it is, the final chapter of DINGO. I hope you all had as much fun reading the weekly installments as I had writing them. And if you did enjoy the story, please show your appreciation by putting a little something in the tip jar. If you can't afford to, then please tell as many friends about DINGO as you can. I know that many of you would like to see it on the bookshelves of your local bookstores (as would I) and if enough people hear about it, read it and enjoy it (seriously, how could they not?) then it just might happen.

Thank you all for taking the time to read. And if you'd like to read more, I have my own blog here where I will have updates on my current and upcoming projects. So please stop by and say hi.

Oh, and don't let the big dog scare you.

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Occasionally, other people at the retirement home would wander by to admire the flower garden. They saw me and my mom sitting on the bench and waved but never walked over to engage us in conversation, something I'm sure we were both thankful for.

The sun was starting to touch the treetops on the horizon. "I have to be going, Mom."

She squinted into the sunlight. "How will you do it?"

"I have a friend."

My mom nodded then reached down the neck of her blouse and pulled out a chain. It was the same one she was wearing in the picture with Sarah. She unclasped it from around her neck and held it in her hand. She held it out to me. "Could you? My hands don't work so well any more."

I held up my two splinted fingers and gestured to my arm in the sling. "Mine not so much either. Tell you what. You hold it and I'll try and push it out."

She grabbed the black plastic pendant between her two hands while I pushed with my good fingers. There was a pop and the plastic button fell out if its bracing. My mother took the button, muttered something under her breath, licked it and placed it on the teddy bear where the missing eye should have been. Tiny tendrils of fabric snaked through the button holes until it was firmly attached. It was a perfect match.

My mom held the teddy bear up to her nose and breathed in. Then she sat back with the doll in her arms, watching the sun fall below the trees. "I should give Sarah a call."

"I think she'd like that." After a moment, I stood up and grabbed my cane. "I have to go now."

She nodded and handed the teddy bear to me, wiping her eyes with the palm of her hand. I stuffed it into my sling and started walking. I stopped. "You want to walk me out?"

"No," she said. "I think I'll just stay here and watch the sunset."

"Okay." I turned to leave.

"Daniel?"

"Yes, mom?"

She looked at me and said, "Don't ever come back."

I walked over, put my hand to her cheek and kissed the top of her head, taking in the sweet smell of jasmine. She held her hand against mine. "Goodbye, Mom."

I walked away from her without looking back.

The nurse inside called me a cab but I decided to wait for it outside. The sun had disappeared behind the trees but it was still light enough to see by. As I stood there waiting for the cab to show, a car pulled up. The driver's side door opened and someone got out. When I saw who it was I nearly fainted. Darby.

She was wearing loose fitting sweats and her hair was matted and disheveled. Her skin was as pale as my mother's. "Hello, Dingo."

"Darby. I can't believe I'm saying this, but it's actually good to see you." She walked up to me, moving as if any sudden movement would cause the glue holding her body together to come undone. "Have to say I'm surprised, you know, seeing you alive and all."

She coughed and winced. "You know me, Dingo. Nothing can keep me down. Now give it to me."

I reached in my sling and pulled out the teddy bear. "You mean this? No, I'm afraid I can't do that."

Darby's expression didn't change. I could tell that it was all she could do just to stand upright. "Dingo, you know I'm going to get it from you sooner or later so you might as well hand it over."

"Sorry, Darby. But it doesn't belong to you."

She took a step closer. "Oh no? Then who does it belong to? You?"

I smiled at her and for the first time in a long while it didn't hurt my face. "No. Not me." I gestured with my cane. "Him."

Cerberus was there, sitting on his haunches only ten feet away. Darby shuffled back, grimacing with every step. I tossed the teddy bear through the air toward the dog. "There you go. It's all there now." Cerberus' jaws opened wide and then snapped shut with a sound like thunder. The teddy bear hung from his teeth by a leg for a moment then the dog flipped it up into his mouth and swallowed it whole.

He came up to me and let me scratch him under his chin. "God, animal. Your breath is foul! How about eating a mint every once in a while." The dog gave me a lick then offered his head for support.

"God damn you, Dingo."

"Hey, if you want it, you've got to deal with him now. I'm not going to stop you." Cerberus growled until I rubbed him between the ears.

Darby swayed for a moment, staring daggers at me before shuffling back to her car. "Dingo," she said, "just because Carson cut you some slack so he could keep me out of trouble doesn't mean you're off the hook. I will get my dowry back, one way or another. So I think you better bone up on your survival skills." She gingerly made her way back inside her car and pushed her head out the window. "Because Dingo, Aunt Medusa ain't got nothing on me." Darby started the car and drove away.

As we watched her drive down the road, I said, "I really need to find a normal girl. What do you think about Heather?" Cerberus barked and almost knocked me over. "I'll take that as a resounding 'thumbs up.'"

The sunlight was quickly fading and there were stars coming out overhead. I scratched Cerberus behind the ears, enjoying the feel of his wiry hair and massive head. I knew that the dog wasn't going to be able to stay now that it had what it came for. It was sad but understandable. He didn't belong here.

"Well, any time you want to chase airplanes, you just come on back. But next time we won't piss around with those baby Cessnas. No, next time we'll go to LAX where you can have some real fun." He nuzzled his head against my chest and licked my hand.

Out on the road there were headlights approaching in the distance. I carefully sat down on a little patch of grass and put my arm around Cerberus. He lay down next to me and rested his head in my lap.

Together, we waited until the cab arrived.

THE END

Chapter 26: Family Reunion

2006-01-26T20:18:00.000-08:00

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My mother looked at me from under a scowl and said, "I thought you were dead."

"Just because you repeat it to yourself over and over again doesn't make it true, Mom. Believe me, I know."

She harrumphed and started walking toward a pair of large glass doors that led out to a well manicured courtyard. Her back was hunched and she walked with a noticeable limp. Her skin was almost translucent and she had trouble filling out her clothes. "Well," she said, "you look like you should be dead. What happened? Girlfriend beat you up?"

Several of the other residents were watching us and not trying very hard to hide their curiosity.

"Yeah," I said. "Something like that."

A lady with white hair and an unnatural hip to waist ratio waddled up to my mom and asked, "Adie, is this your boy? Is this the musician you're always bragging about?" The lady came up to introduce herself but when she was close enough to see me through her cataracts, she jumped back. "Oh dear! Are you all right? What on earth happened to you?"

"Alice," my mother said, "this is the dingo that ate my baby." She chuckled. "His girlfriend beat him up again."

"So, you're not her son?" Alice asked.

"I am, but only by birth."

Alice gave my mom a playful tap on the arm. "Adie, you old devil. You never said you had two boys."

"Actually," I said, "she has three."

"Three!" Alice was practically swooning. No doubt this was going to be the gossip du jour for the next month. I could see my mother's face redden as she opened the doors to the courtyard.

"Alice, my little dingo and I would like to catch up. So, if you'll excuse us."

"Oh, of course." Alice was all smiles as she waved to us and walked away.

When Alice was out of earshot, my mom turned to me and said, "Get your ass out here before I finish what your girlfriend started!"

I went through the doors and followed her to a small little grove where there was a park bench underneath a willow tree, looking out on a flowerbed in full bloom. I felt right at home with my cane and my girdle. Even the sling didn't feel terribly out of place.

My mom sat down on the bench and gestured me to sit down next to her. "All right, what is this about? Do you need money?"

"No, Mom. I don't need money." I did my best not to moan as I sat down. My chest felt like it was about to slide into separate pieces and open up like a cracked coconut. "Did you ever think that maybe I just wanted to stop and say hi?"

"Oh God, how much do you need?"

"I don't need money for Christ's sake!" Pain shot through me and for a second I thought I was going to pass out. It took me a few seconds to catch my breath.

"Well, I know you didn't come here to visit. So why are you here?"

I reached into my sling, pulled out the blood-stained teddy bear, and set it on the bench between us. She didn't move. She just looked at it, her face growing darker. My mom looked up at me and said, "What the hell is it doing out of the box?"

"It was destroyed. Ricky left it-"

"Oh, there you go again, blaming your brother. I asked you to do one thing, one thing, Dingo, and you go and screw it up then try to blame Ricky. Why can't you take responsibility for yourself? Huh?"

I didn't have the energy to argue with her. There was a constant pain in my chest and my head rattled every time she opened her mouth. All I could do was sit there and listen as she went on. "It's Ricky's fault. It's Ricky's fault," she mocked. "I suppose it's Ricky's fault that I'm stuck here in this geriatric zoo, too. And it's Ricky's fault that I have to lie to my friends about who my children are."

"No, that's not what I'm saying."

"Then what are you saying? That it's my fault?"

There was no way I was ever going to win with this woman. "I'm not saying it's anybody's fault, Mom. I'm just trying to tell you what happened."

She gave me a wave of dismissal and stared off into the flower garden. "Oh please, like I could ever believe anything that came out of your mouth. Always telling lies. If you had just kept your mouth shut in the first place, this wouldn't even be an issue."

The flowers bent slightly in the breeze while the long, green leaves of the tree around us swayed like a giant hula skirt. I looked down at myself on the bench, took in the cane, the girdle, the sling, felt the bandages on my head. Then I forced myself off of the bench and stood in front of her.

"Cindy Baxter," I said.

My mom looked up at me, her eyes squeezed into tiny slits. "What are you babbling about now?"

"She was the first person Michael killed."

My mom's eyes narrowed and her mouth puckered impossibly tight. "I think it's time for you to leave now." She made to stand up but I put the tip of my cane to her chest and pushed her back onto the bench. "How dare you!" she hissed.

"Cindy was twenty-two when he killed her. Then there was Larry Morgan."

"Stop this instant!"

"He was only eighteen. Getting ready to leave for the Army."

She shoved my cane aside but I brought it back up and pressed it against her even harder. "I'll scream for security!"

"And then little Lilia Martinez. Do you remember her? They showed her picture at the trial. The one with the pretty pink bows in her hair?"

"Stop it, stop it!"

"She was only eight."

My mother was swatting at my cane, her face contorted in rage. "You prickless bastard! I don't need you to remind me-"

I dropped the cane and grabbed her blouse, my splinted fingers pressing into her neck. Even in my weakened condition I was able to pull her off the bench. She weighed nothing. "Twenty-seven people, Mom! How many of their names do you remember? How many?" She was hitting me with her tiny hands balled into fists. They felt like sparrows pecking at my chest, but even so, if it wasn't for the girdle, they would have dropped me to the ground.

"How dare you do this to your own mother!" Tears started rolling down her cheeks. "Let go of me!"

"Why? So you can run away? Ignore it? Try and forget what your baby did? What about the other babies? Huh? What about their mothers? Tell me, what about them?"

"Shut up!"

"What about Jerry Danielson? Or Linda McPherson?"

"Stop!"

"Mary Vesperov. Sister Virginia. What about them?"

"Stop it!"

"Or Shawna Roberts. Elaine Smith. Little Bobby Horowitz. The Renowski twins!"

"Stop stop stop!" She started hitting my arm in the sling. Little spots of blood were showing through the white of my t-shirt.

"I've never claimed to be the perfect son and I've made more than my share of mistakes, but coming forward about Michael was the one thing I've ever done in my life that I know was right. The only thing I can look back on and say that it was the right decision. For once I didn't make a mistake. Yet you still hated me for it. You made me carry the guilt, didn't you? Saying that it was my fault, that it was my testimony that took your little baby away, put the needle in his arm. You always blamed me! But you never once, not once blamed him!"

"He was my SON!" Her voice cracked and she started sobbing. Snot and tears ran down her wrinkled face until she buried her face in my chest, still hitting me with her tiny fists. Her voice was muffled as she wept in my shirt.

She cried against me until she was exhausted. I eased her back down onto the bench, set the teddy bear aside, and then sat down beside her. She wiped her nose with her sleeve. I put my good arm around her but she shrugged it off. I put my hand in my lap and we sat on the bench in silence, watching bees and butterflies flit among the flowers.

After a while, I reached into my sling and pulled out the picture and handed it to her. She didn't look at me when she took it from my hand.

"What's this?"

"Sarah gave that to me. Wanted me to know what you looked like when you smiled. You have a very pretty smile." She handed the picture back to me and returned to watching the flower bed. "How old are you?" I asked.

My mom looked at me and said, "You going to start visiting on my birthdays now?"

"Come on, how old?"

"I'm fifty-six. Why?"

I set the picture on my knee. "Because you look eighty-six." I tapped the photograph with a splinted finger. "It's killing you, Mom."

She nodded, still staring at the flower garden. "I know, son. I know." She rested her elbows on her knees and propped her chin in her hands. "How did you know?"

I slid the picture back into the sling. "Eunice Devereaux told me."

"What!"

"Darby got hold of the box and tried to sell it to her in exchange for her dowry. But Eunice could tell that Michael's soul wasn't all there."

My mom rolled her puffy eyes. "Goddamn Graeaes. I never did like that girl."

I smiled. "Yeah, that's why I married her." I picked up the teddy bear and set it in my lap. "But why split it?"

My mom hugged herself. "The Graeae wasn't the only one I was hiding it from." She looked at me. "And I'm a mother. Sometimes it's hard to let go."

I nodded and looked out to the flowers. "She's not going to stop until she finds it, you know. And without the box, it won't take her long."

"I'll talk to Sarah, have her spell another box."

"Mom." I put the teddy bear in her lap. It stared up at her with its only eye. "I'm not looking after it any more."

She turned her head to me. The bags under my mom's eyes were red and swollen, her eyes bloodshot. She grabbed the doll and started grooming it, pulling away little bits of lint and brushing off patches of dust. "What is it you expect me to do?"

"Let it go," I said. She pulled the bear to her chest and pressed her face against the top of its head. "You can't burden yourself with this any more, Mom. Enough is enough."

"You know what will happen. You know where he'll go."

I nodded. "Yes, and deservedly so. But it's not your fault, Mom."

She rested the teddy bear in her lap and ran her finger along the edge of its tattered ear. "Yes, it is. It is my fault." Her lower lip quivered as she smiled down at the doll. "I knew, Daniel. God help me, I knew what Michael was doing. And I didn't do anything to stop him. I wanted to, but… He was my baby boy."

This time when I put my arm around her, she didn't resist. She let me lean her against my shoulder and hold her. She rested one hand on my knee and held the teddy bear to her breast with the other. I could smell jasmine in her hair.

She didn't cry. But I did. I didn't know why. I didn't know if it was guilt, shame, anger, frustration, all of it, none of it, I just didn't know. But no matter how much I despised her for how she treated me, I loathed her for how she treated herself. But all that anger, all that hatred bled away until there was nothing left but sad admiration. Sad admiration for a woman who was willing to eternally damn herself just so that she could keep the soul of her child safe from the hell hounds that hunted it.

Even if only for a little while.

Chapter 25: The Sad Fate Of Benedicto Morales

2006-01-19T17:16:00.000-08:00

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The clown and I just stared at each other while the nurse removed my catheter. The clown was wearing a blue wig and a red foam nose that was faded on one side like it had been sitting on the dashboard of someone's car for the past month. In his hand he had a blue foil balloon that hovered and swayed in the re-circulated air.

"I don't suppose you could deliver that balloon some other time," I said. "Like, when the blonde isn't fondling my penis."

"It's the end of my shift. Don't sweat it, man. I've seen this kind of thing before," the clown said as he did his level best not to let his tear-dropped eyes wander down to my naked lower half.
The nurse hitched my gown even farther up my waist and a draft of cold sterile air gave me gooseflesh down my legs. The clown gave an involuntary glance then snapped his gaze back to my face.

Neither of us blinked.

"So, uh, what's with the handcuffs?" the clown asked.

I lifted my unwounded arm and heard the dull clank of metal on metal. Two of my fingers were in splints. "Nurse Ratchet here is a bit of a freak-a-leek."

She stood up with a bed pan in her hands and said, "Not with those goods, honey."
I looked down to the bruised and shriveled memory of my manhood. I honestly couldn't blame her.

The nurse finished her business, handling me like she was scrubbing a rusty skillet. "Get some rest." She snapped off her rubber gloves and started for the door.

"Excuse me, nurse? Nurse? My gown?" The woman didn't even break stride as she walked out of the room.

The clown turned back from watching the nurse leave and stared at me with eyes the size of eggplants. Pale lines of sweat streaked through his makeup as thin wiry strands of blue nylon hair stuck to his forehead. His collar drooped around his neck like a wilted flower.

My eyes roamed over my situation, moving like the stuttering hands of a cuckoo clock. I looked at the clown. Then to the handcuffs on my right hand. To the sling on my left arm. To my completely exposed lower half. Back to the clown.

"You…you, uh…you think you could-"

"I just make the deliveries, man." He held out the balloon as if it had bitten him.

Another twelve hours passed on my cuckoo clock. "Really? And here I just thought you like looking at naked men in handcuffs. You know, there are websites for that kind of thing."

The clown came around and tied the balloon to the bed. "Sorry, it's just, well…" He glanced at the handcuffs. "I've just never met anyone who's been in the news before."

"News? What are you taking about?"

"You're the guy that did all that damage downtown, right?"

"Not directly, no." The cuffs clanked as I tried to pull my gown down. "I guess the cops aren't so sure about that, though. Seriously. You want to give me a hand here, Krusty?" He slid the balloon string along the bed railing within reach of my cuffed hand. "I meant with the gown."

"Sorry, man. Shift's over." And then he left.

My arm was sore and the sling was too tight for me to weasel my gown any lower. I was able to grab the call button with my handcuffed hand and hold the button down. I wasn't going to let up until someone came in here and covered me up.

Three minutes later someone came into the room, but it wasn't a nurse. It was a man in his early thirties with broad shoulders and a suit that cost more than my first year of college. He nodded to a couple of men outside who each took a position on either side of the door. The man walked in and closed the door behind him. He stepped to the foot of the bed and said, "Dingo."

"Carson."

Carson gave me a once over, not at all embarrassed to see me half naked and broken. "Am I interrupting anything?"

"Yes, Carson, because masturbating is the first thing I like to do after waking up from a three day coma."

He smiled and pulled my gown down. "Still the funny man." Carson moved over to the chair across the room and sat down, crossing his legs and brushing a bit of invisible lint from his thigh. "How do you feel?"

"About as good as I look."

"I'm happy to hear that."

My face curled into an involuntary smile. It was stiff and brittle. "Well, it's not the first time I've woken up bloodied and handcuffed to a bed."

Carson sat with his hands folded in his lap. "I know. Darby used to tell me stories."

I nodded, shared a look with him then turned away. I'm sure it was just a product of having my head worked over so many times in the past week, but I could still smell the leather of her boots, feel her thin, knife-like heel digging into my throat. No one knew how to mess me up like Darby did. "So, you couldn't have done me the favor of killing me in my sleep?"

"I'm not here to kill you, Dingo."

I looked back. "Yeah, I'm calling bullshit on that one."

"It's true. If I needed you dead, you never would have made it to the emergency room."

"Needed? Don't you mean wanted?"

Carson laughed. A hint of his Mid-western drawl came out. "Of course I want you dead, Dingo. But fortunately for you, I need you alive."

That much was true. Carson didn't have much pull outside of the state, but in Indiana he could Spilotro my ass in between business calls. The fact that I wasn't fertilizing soybeans at the moment meant that he was telling me the truth. "Need me for what, exactly? Look, if you want me to canvas for your campaign, I'd rather you just kill me now."

Carson's smile was all teeth. "No, Dingo. You ruined any chance I had at a political life years ago. Besides, I learned that I can get more done by buying politicians than actually becoming one. It's one of the many benefits of being grotesquely rich."

"That's what I hear. So what then?"

Carson stood up and walked to the side of the bed. He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out an envelope and tossed it on my lap. "This is your statement to the police."

I stared at it for a moment. "And what exactly does my statement say?"

"That you chased your dog onto my property and into my hotel where you came across a band of South American drug dealers just before their deal went bad. One of them saw you, chased you out of the hotel, followed you and cut a swath of destruction through this fine town in an attempt to kill you."

"South American drug dealers?"

Carson just stared at me.

"So it's just a coincidence that the drug dealer that destroyed half this city in an attempt to kill me was my ex-wife."

Carson's eyebrows furrowed over his nose. "Your ex-wife? That's not what you wrote in your statement. Your statement says that you were chased by a man who was later identified as…," he reached into his breast pocket again, pulled out a Treo, and pressed a button. "…Benedicto Morales."

"Benedicto Morales. A man. In a plaid miniskirt?"

"I don't recall your statement mentioning that."

"There were witnesses, Eli."

He smiled and shrugged his shoulders. "As I said. One of the benefits."

My head was starting to swim and I was getting hungry. "Does the statement really say all that? 'Cause I'm missing the catch here."

Carson put the Treo back in his pocket and folded his arms across his thick chest. "There's no catch, Dingo. You're the only one who knows what happened in that hotel. If you tell the cops that it was my girlfriend who chased you down and burned half the city doing it, I have to answer a lot of questions that I really don't want people to ask. But, if you say a drug deal went bad, I collect the insurance and you get to live. Win win."

I trusted this guy about as far as I could walk at the moment. "Yeah, well what about the train? Or the five blocks of burning cars? People are going to want to see someone pay for that, and they can't sue a dead South American."

"They won't have to sue anyone. Surprisingly, none of the locals were killed, so no worry about any wrongful death lawsuits. It was all property damage. I'll write a couple of checks to the right people. Everyone will be appropriately compensated and I'll probably have a street named after me."

I didn't think it was possible for me to hate this bastard more. "And all it cost you was your girlfriend being shot dead in the street like a dog. Yeah, you're a real fuckin' philanthropist."
Carson chuckled as he smoothed out his suit jacket and headed for the door. "You know, I lied to you, Dingo. There is one catch to all of this." He put his hand on the door handle and stopped. "Darby isn't dead." He opened the door and stepped out muttering, "You poor, unfortunate bastard."

A few minutes after Carson left, the cops came in and uncuffed me. I read the statement, signed it and handed it off. They gave me a nod and then left without so much as a 'get well' or a 'we'll be in touch.'

To my surprise, Heather came in wearing maroon scrubs and carrying a tray full of prepackaged food. "Every time I see you, you just look worse and worse," she said.

"What every guy wants to hear from a pretty girl."

She set the tray down and started fiddling with my i.v.

"Do you like the balloon?"

"The balloon, yes. The ogling clown, not as much."

Heather tapped a tiny air bubble out of the tube and said, "Well, I'm just glad you like it." She grabbed my wrist and felt my pulse. "How's Cerberus?"

I didn't want to think about it. Whatever that dog was, it certainly could handle itself. But that Carson knew that the dog was in his hotel did not bode well. That meant that a body must have been found. "I think he got caught in the fire."

Heather looked at me and put her hand on my shoulder. "Oh God, I'm so sorry." She gave me another one of her genuine smiles of sympathy before saying, "But hey, I've got something that might cheer you up."

My stomach was growling but I didn't have the energy to eat. I was playing with the Jello cubes when Heather put a plastic bin on my lap. "It's your stuff. Some of it is what you had on you when you came in, but the rest was pulled out of your Jeep."

The first thing I noticed was the teddy bear, stained with dark patches of my dried blood. But I couldn't decide if I was happy to see it or just terribly, terribly sad. I was happy that it was here and that it hadn't fallen into the wrong person's hands but part of me wanted it to just be over with. I was tired of hiding the damn thing. And now that I knew that Darby was still alive, I knew she'd eventually come for it. And I had no way of hiding it from her now. Not without the box. Of course, Michael's soul wasn't all here but I didn't think that would matter to Darby. She would either find the rest of it or she'd just find someone willing to pay what she wanted for only half of it. I had no idea what I was going to do.

I rummaged through the other things in the bin. There were maps, a couple of old pulp novels, some matches, a cigar cutter, and the picture that Sarah gave me. I was reaching for one of the books when something about the picture caught my eye. There was Sarah and my mom, both looking happy, if somewhat drunk. I stared at the picture for a moment, taking in my mother's pendant and her gaudy earrings, Sarah's silky dress, the way they both posed for the camera. Then looked at the teddy bear. And then it clicked into place.

All of it.

I knew what I had to do. "Heather, when the hell can I get out of here?"

Heather's face twisted into a cute little swirl of lips and eyebrows. "Well, I'm not a doctor, but since you have a concussion, a cracked sternum, two gunshot wounds, and enough stitches in your head to put a sweatshop out of business, I'd say not for a while yet."

"I have to leave. Today. Now."

"Dingo, you should-"

"Heather, please. Get the doctor."

She put her hands on her hips and sucked on her lower lip. "Okay, but the doctor is going to laugh at you for even suggesting it. I'll be back."

After twenty minutes of arguing, a threatened lawsuit, and a six-digit bribe, the doctor said he'd let me go. I was going to have to wear a special girdle for my cracked sternum and walk with a cane, but at least I would be mobile.

Heather helped me get dressed and wheeled me to the door. My arm was still in a sling and my head was wrapped like a turban.

She said, "Dingo, this is such a bad idea."

"I know, and I promise I'll check back in. But I have something I have to take care of."

A cab rolled up and Heather took me outside. She gave me a cane when I stood up but I lost my balance and fell against the cab. Pain shot up along my arm and I made an ugly sound, but I stayed standing. "Are you sure about this?" Heather asked. "I can take you back inside."

"No. Thanks, but no."

She opened the door and helped me inside. "Be careful, Dingo."

I smiled then gave the cabbie the address.

It took only ten minutes to get to the retirement home. I handed the cabbie a twenty that Heather let me borrow then walked inside.

A woman in an old-school nurse's hat was sitting behind a curved desk while a dozen senior citizens lounged about on couches and chairs, surrounding tables filled with game boards, magazines, and large picture books. I walked up to the woman and told her who I wanted to see.

She nodded, got up, and walked over to someone sitting in an oversized chair. The chair back was too high for me to see over, but I could hear the person talking to the nurse. "Ricky? Ricky's here?" The old woman stood up from the chair and turned to see me. "Oh. It's you."

I tried to smile, but through the bandages and my swollen features I knew that it looked more like a sneer.

"It's good to see you too, Mom."

Chapter 24: Darby's Inferno

2006-01-12T21:05:00.000-08:00

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The reason John Dillinger refused to rob banks in Terre Haute was that there were too many goddamn trains in the city, a point that became obvious when I was caught by one only three blocks from the Terre Haute House.

I stopped behind an old Escort and waited for the train to pass. Red lights flashed, the ground shook, and my ears rattled with the sound of the freight cars barreling by.

The blood that ran down my limp arm was starting to dry and the hand of the other one was sticking to the steering wheel. It was a good sign. At least the bleeding had stopped. Even though I needed it, the hospital was still out of the question. I thought about giving Heather a call but I was pretty sure my injuries were a bit out of her league.

My brain felt like it had been shrink-wrapped. I tried to think of what to do, where to go, but all I could come up with was going to Sarah's and giving her the box, or at the very least have her help me find a place to hide it. But I hated that idea. She didn't deserve to have this thing dumped on her doorstep. She did, however, deserve a serious dressing down for not giving me a proper heads-up about Eunice. When she told me that Eunice was 'evil' I just assumed she meant the hag liked to drown puppies in the tub or punch little old ladies in the neck, not that she was an actual minion of Hell.

Yeah, Sarah and I were going to have to have a little chat.

Out of my rearview mirror I could see blue flames in the windows of the hotel's top floor. And though I couldn't hear the sirens over the train, I could see flashing lights of fire engines and emergency vehicles reflecting off the windows of the lower floors. It made me nervous. I was suddenly worried about Cerberus and I didn't know why. If a dog can bake in hundred and twenty degree desert heat for three days and play Superman in front of a firing squad, a little fire and an old biddy with a squid fetish shouldn't be too much of a problem. Still, I hated to think of something happening to the dog.

There was a bark of tires on pavement as someone turned onto the street from the direction of the hotel about a quarter mile behind me. I could see their headlights closing in on me fast. Their unique design left no doubt in my mind that it was Darby in her truck.

I slammed the Jeep into reverse and backed away from the tracks. Darby came up so fast that my brain didn't have time to register what I needed to do and I just pressed on the gas not realizing I was still in reverse. I backed into a parked car so hard that two of its tires lifted off the ground.

Darby slid past, her tires locked up and screeching. She rear-ended the Escort and sent it sailing through the crossing bar. The wooden bar snapped and flew into the air, exploding into a thousand splinters when it hit the train. The car itself was pushed under the train just enough that the edges of the freight cars sliced into the hood, shooting sparks out like an arc welder.

As I was fumbling to find first gear, I saw the occupants jump out of the car and scramble to safety just before something hanging off the train caught the car. The front half of the Escort disappeared as its back end was tipped up and dragged to the edge of the intersection before spinning around and getting sucked underneath.

Then three things happened simultaneously. Darby spun her Ford around and started strafing my Jeep with an Uzi, the Escort burst into flames as a train car lurched over its shredded husk and jumped the tracks, and the entire top two floors of the Terre Haute House disappeared in a blistering blue fireball.

It sounded like God Himself was pitching a first-rate hissy fit.

I was able to drop the Jeep into first gear, press the gas, and slide down into the empty space where the passenger seat should have been. Bullets tore through the doors and shattered the windshield. If it wasn't for Cerberus' impatience earlier, I wouldn't have been able to get low enough out of the path of Darby's bullets. Problem was I couldn't see a damn thing and with the unearthly howl of the derailing train behind me, I couldn't tell if Darby had stopped shooting.

I took a chance and looked up just in time to see that I was heading off the road and onto the sidewalk. I pressed the brake with my left foot and my tires squawked like dying geese. My front tire hit the curb and buckled. The front end tilted forward like the vehicle had tripped then it hit a large blue mailbox, sending it careening through the air and into a large glass shop window.

The impact sent me into the dashboard. I hit the glove compartment with my shoulder and the side of my face, cracking the plastic molding. The glove compartment fell open and everything inside spilled out on top of my head. As I brushed it all away, I noticed that the box was underneath me, splintered and cracked into a dozen pieces. After wiping the blood from my nose, I grabbed the teddy bear and shoved it down my pants.

The hotel was now a full-on five-alarm inferno and the train was still dying in protracted agony. Several of the train cars were crashing into an abandoned gas station while several onlookers were having trouble deciding which tragedy to gawk at. Neither one interested me. The only thing that had my attention was the '59 Ford barreling down on me.

I reached down and found the gun, hopped up onto the seat then stepped on the roll bar with my good ankle. Darby was only twenty feet away.

And she wasn't braking.

Her face was split into an impossibly wide grin as she aimed the Uzi at me through the hole where her windshield should have been. It was amazing how much detail I noticed given the speed she was driving. The way the wind blew back her hair, the soft reflection of street-lights and glowing flames on her lightly glossed lips, the cute little vein on her forehead that only popped out when she was angry with me. Even now when she was off the rails and pursuing a scorched earth vendetta, she was heart-breakingly gorgeous.

She fired the Uzi just before the truck hit the Jeep. I jumped, kicking my legs overhead, and aimed the gun straight down. I saw her bullets ping off the roll bar, throwing out sparks and little black flakes of paint. When the front end of her truck hit my Jeep, I was directly overhead, aiming down in a zero-G handstand. I put two bullets through the roof before Darby went flying out through the windshield after the truck came to a dead stop. The Jeep, however, followed the mailbox through the storefront window.

I landed flat on my back in the bed of her truck. It felt like I was made of glass and that every part of me shattered into a million tiny slivers. My breath was gone and my vision was blurry. I could feel my face starting to swell. Blood ran down the back of my throat and started crusting inside my nostrils as I blinked away the tears.

When my vision cleared, I noticed stars overhead. The moon was a thin curve of light hanging directly above me. And for a moment, it was serene, like I had just parked in the middle of a field to do a little stargazing. But it didn't take long for the screams of terrified people to snatch that image away.

I was able to catch my breath enough to crawl over the side of the truck bed and fall to the street. A couple of bystanders ran over and helped me stand. Once I was up, I saw the full scale of what was going on. The train behind me had finally come to a stop, but there were freight cars everywhere. Several had plowed into nearby buildings, turning them into piles of brick and twisted steel. Smoke billowed out from behind one of the broken buildings as a woman across the street looked on, repeating the words, "Oh my God, oh my God," over and over again as if she were lost in a yogic chant.

The Terre Haute House was now almost completely engulfed in flames. I could hear the sirens now, coming in from every direction. People stopped their cars in the middle of the street and got out to look at the horror that was unfolding in their tiny city.

Bullets pinged off the back of the truck. The two people that helped me dropped to the ground and tried to pull me down with them, but I knew that if I hit the ground one more time, I'd never get up.

Darby was on the sidewalk trying to get her balance as she aimed the Uzi at me. She had a small gash on her forehead and a trace of blood trickled down her temple.

I shouted, "Stay down!" to the couple on the ground and then hobbled toward a back alley, keeping my head below a string of parked cars. More bullets chased me.

When I came out of the alley, I crisscrossed back through a parking lot and moved back toward the street. When I got to the sidewalk, several fire engines screamed past, followed by a phalanx of Terre Haute's finest with their sirens blaring. They disappeared around the corner toward the burning hotel.

Glass shattered as bullets ripped through the parked car next to me. I turned to see that Darby was only fifty feet away. She was walking down the center of the street, tossing out round after round like candy at a parade. People abandoned their cars in the middle of the road in a mad dash to get out of her path. She just ignored them.

I turned and pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. The gun was empty. I ducked as she sprayed more bullets into the car.

It was difficult to see now that my face was swelling after doing that full gainer into the dashboard. I could tell by how hard it was to breathe that my nose was ruined and I was pretty sure that the lack of feeling in my left arm wasn't a good sign either.

The Uzi exploded again in short bursts, but this time the bullets didn't hit the car on the side I was hiding behind, but more toward the back end of the vehicle instead. Back where the gas tank was.

"Oh, puke." I kept my head down and limped away as fast as I could.

There were a few more gunshots then the car ignited in a blast that lifted the car completely off the ground. I felt a rush of hot air pick me up from behind and throw me against a lamppost. Something in my chest snapped. I slid down the lamppost and landed in an awkward heap, hunched over myself. I could smell burnt hair and there was a sharp ringing in my ears.

I was able to get on my knees and use the lamppost to stand up. When I breathed in, I almost fell to the ground again. I could only take shallow breaths. Anything more felt like an ice-pick stabbing me through the chest.

The ruined car was shooting flames forty feet into the air. Tires from other nearby vehicles blew out and street signs curled from the intense heat. Every car alarm in a five block radius was bleating in panic.

I tried to weave my way between the abandoned cars on the street but was having trouble navigating. My left eye was now completely swollen shut. The only way I knew where the burning car was at was by keeping the heat to my back as I moved. When I got to the edge of an empty intersection, there was a gunshot and something bit into my thigh.

The pain was barely perceptible among every other scrape, break, and gunshot I had. I was able to make it another twenty feet before my leg gave out on me and I fell to the pavement. My lizard brain kicked in and I crawled, mindlessly, as one bloody hand reached out and pulled the rest of my wasted corpse behind it.

And then I felt Darby's foot press against my neck.

She kicked me onto my back and stepped on my throat. There was something strangely erotic about a Riot Grrrl in a Catholic whore-girl outfit stepping on my neck with stiletto heels, but when Darby held her hand in front of her face to protect herself from the spattering of my skull fragments, the hint of my erection immediately disappeared.

"You don't want to do this Darby." My windpipe sounded broken. Hell, most likely was. I could smell the cold tang of her leather boots over the coppery scent of my own blood. I coughed up a gout of bloody phlegm and made a noise that sounded more mechanical than organic.

"Dingo," she said to me, "there's nothing in this world I want to do more." She put a little more weight on my throat.

From the periphery of the one eye that wasn't completely swollen shut, I could see flashes of light off in the distance. Red, blue, yellow. But there were no sounds. No sirens, no horns, no nothing. Wait. There they were. For a moment I wondered why I couldn't I hear them sooner, but the warm trickle down my neck answered my question.

"Promise me…"

She aimed the gun and peeked between her fingers. "Promise you what?"

"Don't give it to Eunice." My throat was on fire. "Anyone but her."

Darby stared at me through the sights of the gun and said, "Okay, but only if you answer something for me." She dropped the gun to her side. "Your little whore. Did you love her?"

My little whore. We'd talked about her dozens of times before, though it had been in the presence of half a dozen lawyers and never quite this violent. Close, but not quite. But that was one question she'd never asked me before.

Of course, she had been too busy threatening to pull my spine out through my nose to ask me much of anything.

I swallowed the blood that had pooled at the back of my throat. "No. I didn't love her."

I heard screeching tires and doors swinging open as Darby stood over me, silhouetted in a kaleidoscope of flashing lights. She looked down at me and sneered.

"I'm sorry, Darby." I tried to smile but my face was as stiff and swollen as a package of stale marshmallows.

Her sneer softened and she said, "Yeah. Me too." Then she raised the gun.

There were voices, all shouting, all screaming, all demanding she put the gun down. But Darby didn't move. The lights played off of her blue-black hair as she stood over me, her thick, heavy gun aimed at my broken face.

More voices, more shouts. But her whisper cut through them all like a razor. "This isn't over, Dingo. Remember, I have friends in Hell." She tightened her grip on the gun and winked at me. "You don't."

Her wicked grin was the last thing I saw before my eye finally swelled shut and the roar of police gunfire deafened my only good ear.

Chapter 23: There Was A Man Who Had A Dog...

2006-01-05T20:11:00.000-08:00

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I brushed the dust off of my jeans and walked up next to Cerberus. I scratched him behind the ears as best I could with my mangled hand then looked down to see a few dozen bullets all lying at his feet like birdseed. They hadn't even so much as scratched the dog.

I looked up at all the heavies' bloodless faces and said, "Oh man, you guys are fucked, wholesale."

The dog's laugh then went from a playful 'Silly Rabbit, Trix Are For Kids' chuckle to a more ominous 'The Voices In My Head Say You Killed My Baby' cackle.

The heavies moved like synchronized swimmers as they dropped the clips from their guns and reached inside their jackets for more ammo. Cerberus launched himself at the nearest body and rent it in half, spraying blood and viscera across the room.

Bullets and body parts exploded in every direction as Cerberus turned the entire room into a giant blender. While he was tossing heavies around like rag dolls, I ran over to the bodies of the first two people he killed and rummaged through their sloppy corpses for a gun and a couple of clips. Once I was able to get my crooked fingers around the pistol in a way that would make it more than just a stage prop, I ran for the box on the table, dodging flying human debris as I went.

Cerberus wrapped his jaws around one man's chest, crunched, and then flipped his limp and lifeless body away. It slammed into the lamp. There was a loud crash, a strobe-like flicker as the lamp fell over, and then there was darkness.

Flashes of gunfire lit up the room in quick, random bursts. I stayed low and out of Cerberus' path as I headed toward the table, but I could hear bullets scream past me.

Someone grabbed me. I was moving by pure instinct since the flashes of gunfire weren't enough to see by. I brought my arm up under the guy's elbow then threw my own elbow into his face. He blocked it with one hand then twisted his other arm loose and leveled a pistol at my head. He fired.

I was able to knock his arm aside just enough that the bullet hit me in the arm instead of the face. I could feel it tear into the muscle just below my shoulder and chip off the bone before ripping its way out of the back of my arm.

I screamed and tried to bring the butt of my own pistol over against his temple, but in the dark I was only able to get him in the neck. I jumped back and just started firing in his general direction. My aim was on and I watched his body flail in the strobe effect of my gunfire.

Pressing my hand over the gunshot wound, I stumbled toward the table. About three feet from the table, I felt a hand fall on my shoulder. I reached up, brushed the hand with my pistol, twisted in an inelegant display of Lame Ass Fu and aimed the gun into the darkness. Fortunately the hand wasn't attached to anyone.

Finally at the table, I grabbed the box and slid underneath. Things were slapping onto the tabletop like frogs falling out of the sky. I peered out and tried to gauge the best way to make it out of the room, but it was hard to see who was still standing and exactly where the eye of Cerberus' storm was. The dog was still thrashing and gnashing, but the flashes of gunfire were getting fewer and fewer. But even though there weren't as many gun blasts now, I could still see. Light was coming from nearby.

At first I thought the lamp had kicked back on, but the lamp was on the far side of the room, bent and wrapped around something that used to be a person.

The light grew brighter, casting everything in a blue sheen. There was only one heavy still standing now. The rest of them were either discarded all over the floor or decorating the walls. One was actually dripping from the ceiling. Cerberus circled the bleeding man as he fumbled with a handless stump to reload his gun. The dog shot forward and hamstringed him, taking out most of the guy's thigh in a single bite. But before the man could fall to the ground, Cerberus snatched his head in between his massive jaws and bit down. The sound made me want to vomit.

Cerberus licked his chops, sniffed the air, and turned to me under the table. He gave me a playful bark and started wagging his tail, sending blood and filth flying through the air. His fur was soaked with blood, matted down in thick, heavy strands and his teeth looked like the knives of Caesar's Senate. No, this definitely wasn't a Frisbee-in-the-park kind of dog.

I crawled out from under the table and stood up. And that's when I saw where the light was coming from. Eunice was standing in the corner of the room, her hands relaxed at her sides as small waves of blue light and traces of electricity washed over her. Her hunched spine started uncurling, gnarled vertebrae by gnarled vertebrae. When she reached her apex, she was easily eight feet tall.

Cerberus hopped over to me and tried to push me toward the door with his heavy head. But I was transfixed. The light, the colors. It was all oddly beautiful. But when the metal brackets over her mouth started spooling out like rusty tentacles, I lost my shit. I tucked the box under my wounded arm and ran for the door, keeping Cerberus between me and Madam Nautilus the whole time. The dog followed me until I was out of the room, and when I turned and looked back, the crazy mutt was wagging his tail with his bloody tongue hanging out his mouth like he had just spent an afternoon at the park chasing tennis balls.

Fucking.

Wrong.

With the box under my arm and a gun in my twisted hand, I bolted down the hallway and tried to find the elevator. I made it around the corner before I realized that Cerberus wasn't with me. I turned and started to head back, but when I heard the sounds coming from that room I decided against it. The dog could take care of himself. He did, after all, just puree an entire goon squad.

I made my way back down the hall, trying to remember exactly where the elevator was, but the light from the room bleeding around the corner wasn't enough to see by. After a few frantic minutes of searching, I brushed my elbow over the elevator's control panel. But as I was pressing the down button with the barrel of the gun, I heard a gunshot from down the hall behind me as plaster exploded a few inches above my head.

I raised the gun and started firing in the direction of the gunshot, not even looking at what I was shooting at while I ran farther down the corridor. More bullets whizzed by. I ducked into a room as a few slammed into the doorjamb behind me. I kicked the door shut and turned to run for cover, but stopped short when I ran into something. I looked up to see Benoit's bloody and swollen face staring back at me.

I was right back where I started.

The son-of-a-bitch wasn't dead, but I honestly didn't think he was alive either. His mouth was slack and his eyes weren't focused. He stumbled back a step and tried to say something but the only thing that came out of his mouth was blood and spittle.

He reached out to grab me. I ducked under his arm and kicked him in the small of the back, throwing him against the door, which bent outward with the impact then snapped back into shape. Benoit turned around, supporting himself against the door with his one good arm and said, "Dingo." His voice sounded like it had been stepped on and then pieced back together with glue and Popsicle sticks.

The wood behind him splintered and his forehead opened up in a wet spray. More bullets pushed through the door as Benoit's body fell against the door and then slid to the floor.

I ran to the far side of the room and aimed the gun at the door. There was a loud thud as someone on the outside tried to kick the door open, but Benoit's body was wedged against the bottom, keeping it from opening. I put two bullets through the door right where I thought the person would be standing. There was a muffled curse, then silence.

The light coming through the windows from the street lamps cast weird and amorphous shadows around the room. I was seven stories up and my left arm wasn't more than a wet noodle. There was no way I could scale the side of the building, especially while holding the box. All I had in the room with me was the broken chair, the pile of drapes, and Benoit's dead body. I started working through various scenarios when someone on the other side of the door said, "Dingo, you rat-bastard, you're going to give me that fucking box and then you're going to tell me where the rest of Michael is." It was Darby.

I saw an eye peek through one of the bullet holes and I fired. My aim was so bad that I actually shot Benoit's body instead of the door. But it did the trick. Darby's eye disappeared from the hole in the door and I moved to the other side of the room.

"You can't hold me off forever, Dingo. I've got more than enough ammo to tear that room apart. I don't have to see you to do it, either. I'll get lucky sooner or later. And don't think that dog of yours is going to come to your rescue. He's a little busy at the moment." She laughed.

I was losing a lot of blood and didn't think I'd be able to stay conscious for much longer unless I could get it to stop. The pile of old drapes was nearby so I grabbed a handful and ripped off a strip of the fabric to tie off the wound. My arm was slicked with blood. It dripped off of my fingertips and soaked into the carpet.

Once I had my arm tied off, I sat down with my back against the wall and watched the door. As quietly as I could, I dropped the clip from my gun and finagled another one into the handle. On the other side of the door, I could hear Darby singing.

"There was a man who had a dog and Dingo was his name-o."

I tried to use my left hand to cock the gun, but my arm was too weak and my fingers were too slicked with blood to get a good enough grip.

"D-I-N-G-O…"

I bit down on the top of the gun and pulled back.

"D-I-N-G-O…"

One of my teeth popped and blood spilled over the side of the gun.

"D-I-N-G-O and Dingo was his name-o."

I spit the tooth out and watched it roll over next to the broken chair. Well, it was bound to happen. My head couldn't take this much abuse and still stay in one piece for too long.

"There was a man who had a dog and Dingo was his name-o."

I scanned the room for anything that might help me and stopped when I saw the door to the dumbwaiter.

BLAM! A bullet ripped through the door.

"I-N-G-O…"

BLAM! Another one.

"I-N-G-O…"

BLAM!

"I-N-G-O and Dingo was his name-o. How'm I doing? Still alive in there, ice-pack?"

I put a shot through the door.

She laughed. "Woo hoo! Not to worry. I still got four verses to go."

I sent a couple more shots through the door then ran over to the dumbwaiter. I kicked at the tiny door. I heard Darby say, "Fuck this," then start firing at the door's hinges.

The top hinge of the hotel room door fell apart as I got the dumbwaiter door open. A wave of stale mildew hit me as I threw my legs down into the chute. The bottom hinge of the front door exploded in a shower of white hot fragments and the door came crashing down on top of Benoit's body. Darby jumped through the doorway with a Glock in each hand, firing indiscriminately into the room.

I was able to squeeze off a couple of rounds at her before I slid down out of sight, but I knew I missed the mark since there were still bullets hitting the wall directly above me.

I let myself fall for a few feet before using my legs to slow my descent, but when I saw Darby's shadow creep into the opening above me, I pulled my legs together, pointed the gun directly overhead, and unloaded.

My shins scraped against the moldy bricks and rusty nails as Darby's shadow completely filled the tiny opening above me, dimming what little light there was in the chute. I plunged down into absolute darkness.

I had no idea how far I fell, but when I hit, my right ankle twisted and fire shot up my leg all the way to my hip. Fortunately, there was an opening the size of a doormat behind me. Gunshots rang out overhead and bullets sparked all around me as I lowered my head and fell backward out of the chute.

Whatever I landed on collapsed in a crash of metal on metal. It took me a moment, but I realized that I had fallen onto a stack of various kitchen supplies. Pots, pans, cookie sheets, all poorly stacked in random piles throughout the room.

As I pulled myself out from under the mess, I gave my body a quick diagnostic. I couldn't tell which hurt more: my head, my hands, or my ankle, but at least they were all more or less functional. My left arm, however, was going numb.

Moving along the wall, I came to a service door that led to the back alley where my Jeep was parked. I limped to the Jeep and tossed the box onto the floor then pulled my broken body behind the steering wheel.

I tossed the gun in the glove box then started the Jeep. I began to pull away but stopped when I came to the passenger seat and the chain sitting in the middle of the alley. I looked up and saw blue light seeping out from various places on the seventh floor of the hotel and I could still hear the low, nearly inaudible rumble of Cerberus' growl.

I knew that if I went inside to help him, I would never come out again. If Darby didn't kill me, Eunice sure as hell would. I was afraid Cerberus was on his own. But I wasn't too worried about it. The damn thing was probably having the time of its life.

Huh. A Frisbee by any other name…

Chapter 22: Zen Of The Mosh

2005-12-29T22:21:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year, folks. Be safe and best of luck to you all in '06.

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Benoit leaned against the wall across from me and played with his gun while he watched me test the ropes that bound me to the chair. I always had a suspicion that I would die tied up in one way or another, but I was at least comforted by the fact that there were no ferrets around to savage my ankles while it happened.

After a few seconds, he glanced out the window to the empty lot below and then to his watch.

"You're going kill me, aren't you?" I asked.

"Yep." He crossed his arms and continued to stare out the window. "Just waiting for a train to pass by so she can't hear the gun. Don't want to interrupt her business."

"You're a gentleman."

I pulled at the ropes again, but they were too tight. The chair felt flimsy enough that I could break it apart but that would have taken too much time. Benoit would shoot me long before I could free myself.

I searched the room for anything that might be useful, but it was empty save for some tattered drapes rotting in a corner and the door to a dumb-waiter on the wall. Well, if this was it, I wasn't about to let this son-of-a-bitch get away with it for nothing.

"Your wife left you, you know."

He looked at me. "What's that?"

"Your wife. Cute lady, just gave birth to one of your little ratlings, remember?"

Benoit took a step forward. "What the fuck do you know about her?"

I shrugged my shoulders as best I could given the circumstances. "Nothing, really. Just that she wanted me to tell you that she's leaving you."

Something was working behind his eyes, like he was seeing how far he could calculate Pi in his head. "Yeah, well fuck that bitch."

I nodded and turned my mouth into a frown of sympathy. "Yeah, well she took your son with her. And you're not supposed to go looking for them."

I could hear his breathing getting heavier. "Bullshit," he said. "She'd never leave me. She's not that stupid."

"She was stupid enough to marry you."

Julius stepped up to me and pointed the gun at my nose. "What did you just say, motherfucker?"

"Hey, all I'm saying is that she's gone, man. If you don't believe me, that's fine, but I walked her and little junior out to the cab myself."

Benoit's face twisted into something resembling a cinnamon roll. His cheeks were bright red and his nostrils flared underneath the gauze and medical tape. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a phone, flipped it open and started punching buttons.

"She's not going to talk to you," I said.

"Shut the fuck up!" He waved the gun at me but his aim was off since he was too busy concentrating on the phone. "Pick up the phone, goddammit. Pick it up!"

I couldn't help but laugh. Benoit turned to me and backhanded me with the pistol grip. The blow just glanced me and would have been worse if I hadn't pulled back when I did, but it still left a serious gash in my cheek. I could feel blood starting to flow. It hurt like a son-of-a-bitch, but honestly, it was nice to have my right side worked on for a change. The left side of my head was getting way too much attention lately.

Benoit shouted into the receiver, "Baby, where the hell are…now you listen to…wait…hold on, that's not my fault…wait…I…I…don't hang up…don't hang up!"

He stood there with the phone to his ear for a few seconds, then he pulled it away and crushed it in his meaty hand. Veins bulged from under his silk collar. I figured that if I pushed him now, he wouldn't bother waiting for the train. Which would be a good thing since I didn't want to take a chance on Darby coming back before he killed me. I had absolutely no desire to see what she would do to me once she got her dowry back. Granted, spending my last moments looking at her would be better than having to stare at this sweaty jackass, but I didn't think she'd let me keep my eyes long enough for me to enjoy the view.

"Told you she wouldn't talk to you."

Benoit charged me and grabbed me by the throat. "Where is she?"

"How the hell shooommpphhh-" He shoved the barrel of the gun in my mouth all the way to the back of my throat. I struggled not to gag, but I had to admit that one last cookie toss on this guy would make my death a little less bitter.

He cocked the hammer back. "You got three seconds."

I mumbled something. He pulled the gun out and then let go of my neck. I worked my jaw and then spit to the side. I never realized it before but gunmetal tasted like shit. "Now, when you say three seconds, do you mean 'One, Two, Three, shoot' or do you mean you're going to shoot me, like, ON three?"

Benoit's eye started twitching. It pulled at the bandages across his nose making his whole face quiver. He took a deep breath through his mouth and said, "I've changed my mind. I'm not going to shoot you, Dingo." Benoit stepped toward me and I became acutely aware of how incredibly large he was. "Instead, I'm going to beat you bloody and then shit in your dead mouth. How does that sound?"

"Charming. With pillow talk like that, no wonder she married you."

Julius smiled through the bandages. "Why don't we go ahead and get started."

"Don't you think Darby's going to be a little pissed off if you kill me before she gets a chance to?"

"Carson signs my paychecks, not her." He smiled. "And I don't think he'd much mind." And then he reached for me.

I tilted myself on the back legs of the chair using the balls of my feet. One of his fingernails caught me across the nose but I was able to fall backwards onto my back. Unfortunately my hands were tied behind the back of the chair. They twisted underneath my weight and I could hear a couple of my fingers crack as they were forced into unnatural positions. I bit back a scream.

Benoit's momentum carried him toward me, but he was off balance. I leaned to one side, catching his shin in between the chair legs, and twisted. His knee popped and he came crashing to the floor next to me, kicking up decades-old dust and debris. I rolled the edge of the chair's back onto his arm that held the gun, putting all of my weight on it and digging in as hard as I could. Bone snapped and his hand went limp. The gun dropped away.

He yelled like a fog horn in my ear. I could feel his mass next to me as he reached for me with his other hand. I pushed off the floor with a knee and rolled up on top of him, my back on his chest, and threw my head back into the bridge of his already broken nose. I felt something give like the overripe husk of a melon.

Benoit tried to reach for his gun with his useless hand and protect his shattered face with the other, but I wasn't about to let up. I kept throwing my head back, pounding his face with the back of my skull. My own brain was rattling and I could feel a world-class migraine building, but I didn't care. This bitch made me walk the plank AND he trashed my Jeep. Nothing was going to stop me from going total mosh-pit on the motherfucker.

It was Zen-like. I fell into a rhythm, my head bobbing to an internal cadence that wouldn't let me stop, even after Benoit's body went slack underneath me. When I finally did stop, I had to wait and catch my breath before rolling off of him.

It took me a few minutes to untie myself since several of my fingers were near useless, but it helped that the chair practically disintegrated when I started twisting out of the ropes. Once free, I grabbed Benoit's gun, wrapped my middle finger around the trigger, and moved toward the door.

Once there, I peeked outside, but it was hard to tell if there was anyone in the hallway. There were no windows to let in the fading twilight and electricity hadn't pumped through this building's veins since Larry Byrd led ISU to a National Championship. But I knew that if Benoit had been worried about somebody hearing the gun, they'd have to be somewhere on this floor.

As I walked a little farther along the musty corridor, I had to keep one mangled hand to the wall to keep me from stumbling since my feet were still numb from lack of circulation. I turned a corner at the far end of the hallway and then stopped. There was bright, pale light bleeding out from under one of the closed doors ahead. And I could hear voices.

The light shot through my eyes and straight to the back of my head. That world-class migraine that started when I was head-butting Benoit was now going full bore, turning my head into a cancerous mass of torn and swollen tissue metastasizing out from the stump of my neck.

I stepped up to the door and pressed my ear against the wood. The voices were muffled, but I could tell that there were at least three people inside, talking on the far side. And one of them was Darby.

I held the gun up at the ready, hoping that the fingers pointing in odd directions didn't hamper my aim. I could probably squeeze off several shots before anyone could really react, but I had serious doubts that I'd be able to hit anything.

I toyed with the idea of going down and finding Cerberus, but if Eunice the Wonder-Hag was going to be showing up in just a few minutes, I needed to get the box back now. I took a few quick breaths, lifted my boot, and threw my heel at the door.

In my mind's eye, I saw myself breaking in the door and bursting in like a one-man S.W.A.T. team hell bent on bringing the bad guys to justice. Unfortunately, the door was so fragile with dry-rot that my foot punched straight through the door all the way up to my knee. My momentum threw me off balance and I fell back, slamming my head against the floor.

Everything went black for a second, but I came to and found myself hanging from my knee like a pig in a slaughterhouse.

Something grabbed my foot and the door handle turned. The door swung inward with me still attached to it, bunching my T-shirt up at my shoulders. Above me, two men with pistols and sunglasses were looking at me like housekeepers deciding how best to remove a stain from the carpet.

"Oh, hey guys, what's up?"

The one holding my foot pushed it through the door while the other grabbed me and stood me up. They easily pried the gun from my hand and then shoved me into the room.

It turned out that my powers of deduction were way off. There were at least ten people in the room instead of three. Several were scattered throughout the room, all of them in standard issue Fed-Wear while five people were standing around a fold-out table flanked by a giant gas powered construction lamp. Darby was the only one of them I recognized.

The box was on the table.

Darby turned and looked at me with more hate and disgust than I'd ever seen from a person before. But she didn't say anything to me. Instead, she turned to the figure next to her and said,

"My apologies for the interruption, ma'am."

That's when I got a good look at the woman she was talking to. I had no doubt that it was Eunice Deveroux. She was six-and-a-half feet tall and wearing a black dress that molded to her thin, fragile features. Her breasts wilted under the dark fabric of her dress. Her head was bald and littered with kidney-colored splotches while her back bent in a hunch that made it appear as if she had two heads, one right in front of the other. But the thing about her that disturbed me the most were the curved metal brackets that covered her mouth like it had been stitched shut with re-bar.

A round man in a cheap suit looked at Darby and said, "Madam Deveroux is not concerned. But she would like to examine the merchandise now."

Darby motioned to the box on the table. "Of course."

I was fucked, no two ways about it. There were over half-a-dozen heavies in the room waiting to put me down if I so much as flinched, but I kind of got the feeling that hag-o-licious would be the one flaying me if I got out of line.

Eunice reached out and ran her fingers over the box. Her fingers were like tiny garden hoses with brown, flaky nails at their tips. She grabbed the lid and pushed it open. Her hands hovered over the open box for a minute then she reached in and pulled out the dark, horrid thing lying inside.

The teddy bear.

The teddy bear had been Michael's favorite toy when he was a kid. He had taken it everywhere. Nursery school, the doctor's office, the swimming pool. The damn thing had more mileage than I did. And every time it started to fall apart, my mother would use her rudimentary sewing skills to put it back together. Now, it was just a ragged memory of a toy. Stuffing leaked out in several places and one of its black, plastic eyes was missing. There was a denim patch poorly stitched to its belly and its left arm was shorter than the other.

The old woman held the teddy bear to her ear for a moment then set it back down in the box and closed the lid. The round man turned to Darby and said, "Madam Deveroux would like to know where the rest of the merchandise is."

Darby smoothed her skirt and said, "I'm sorry, I don't understand."

"Madam Deveroux says that it's not all here."

"No offense, ma'am, but it's there. That's it. It's in there, I can feel it." Darby shifted from one stiletto-heeled foot to the other as she tried to smile. She wasn't accustomed to being told she was wrong.

Eunice reached over and ran a brittle finger along Darby's jaw-line. The man said, "Yes, but not all of it. You are young and your powers have not yet fully developed. It would be difficult for you to feel the subtle difference."

Darby opened her mouth to say something, but then closed it and gave the old woman a deferential nod. Then both she and Eunice turned to me.

"Um, this is all news to me," I said. Which, sadly, was the truth. How only part of a person's soul could be locked inside a teddy bear was a mystery to me and it was a mystery I really had no desire to have solved. My mother had always been a crafty little weasel, but I couldn't begin to fathom why she would do something like this.

Eunice watched me with her jaundiced eyes then turned to the round man and gestured toward him. He said, "Madam Deveroux will be willing to purchase this item for the agreed upon monetary price. However, because this is not the original item agreed to, she will only be willing to pay the monetary price. Your request for services, I am afraid, must be declined."

Darby's eyebrows narrowed over her nose as she glared at me. Then her lips curled back in a smile that made my spine go numb. "Pardon, madam Deveroux," she said. "If I were able to obtain the rest of the original item, would you then be willing to grant my request for services?"

"Madam Deveroux would find that acceptable."

"Wonderful."

The men on either side of me each grabbed one of my arms and started to drag me over to Darby and Eunice. Darby's eyes were glinting with the dreams of all the wonderfully painful things she was going to do to me while Eunice's cataracts sparkled with ideas that made me wish I'd let Benoit pummel the life out of me. But their eyes darted away from me when the door creaked open. The men pulling me stopped and we all turned to look. There, filling the broken doorway, was Cerberus.

I could feel his growl thrumming through the floor, numbing my feet and drowning out the dull whine of the lamp engine. Little flakes of plaster fell from the walls and bits of ceiling rained down around us. One of the heavies behind me whistled then said, "Holy shit. Look at the size of that thing."

The guys that flanked me moved to raise their guns but Cerberus was on us before they could take aim. I fell back and slid across the ground. Cerberus was all fur and fangs as he tore into them. One of them was able to get off an ineffectual shot, but the dog snapped off his arm with a single bite before removing his face with another. In just a matter of seconds it was over. Little bits of flesh and fabric poked out from his wild hair.

The dog stepped over the broken bodies and put himself between me and everyone else in the room. Then all at once, the other heavies pulled out guns, aimed them at Cerberus, and started unloading.

I wanted to run forward and stop them, run interference, do something, but there was nothing I could do. Instead, I shrank back against the wall and tried not to get caught by any stray bullets. It seemed to go on forever. Shot after shot rang out as bullets slammed into Cerberus, thwumping like angry drums.

The gunshots echoed for a few seconds after everyone stopped firing. A haze of gun-smoke hovered over the room and there was a harsh, sulfurous stench of gunpowder. The heavies all stood there, their guns dangling at their sides, and stared at Cerberus.

Miraculously, the dog was still standing, but his head was low, hanging between his paws. One of the bullets must have perforated his lungs since he was wheezing in short, ragged bursts. His shoulders hitched in a tight rhythm and his lips were curled back in a rictus grin.

No one moved. We all watched and waited for the dog to cough up one last, shallow breath before collapsing to the floor in a giant heap.

But then two of the heavies did the strangest thing. They pissed themselves. Sure as shit, they stood there, their faces stark white and their eyes unblinking as they soiled their fine silk suits. It took me a full three seconds to realize exactly what was happening, but when Cerberus slowly raised his head, it hit me. A lot of people in that room were going to die. In very unpleasant ways. Cerberus wasn't wheezing.

He was laughing.

Chapter 20: Queen of the Stone Age

2005-12-22T17:35:00.000-08:00

I'm posting a day early this week since I will be too busy tomorrow getting ready for the holiday weekend. I'm sure you don't mind. Have a great holiday everyone!

Next week I will resume the one chapter a week schedule.

See sidebar for previous chapters.

I pulled into a small park on the north side of town and parked my Jeep next to a couple of green tin garbage cans. There were two college students out enjoying the day by tossing a Frisbee to a Jack Russell Terrier while several sorority girls danced around on the jungle gym like something from a fanboy fantasy.

I dredged my cell phone out of my pocket and flipped it open. The view screen was half filled with an amorphous bubble of river water, but surprisingly the damn thing still worked. I scrolled through, found Sarah's number, and hit 'Send.'

"Daniel? Hi, sweetie! I was worried about you. Is everything okay?"

"No. I need your help." Cerberus hopped out of the Jeep and started sniffing around the garbage cans. He leaned over the edge of one and poked his head inside, his head barely fitting inside the opening. The Jack Russell off in the distance dropped the Frisbee and started howling at us. The two guys with the dog tried to calm him but it kept snapping at them every time they tried to pick him up.

"Oh God, what's wrong? You're not in jail are you?"

I ignored the question. "Darby sold the box on eBay last night."

The phone was silent for a moment. "I'm sorry, Daniel. I don't think I heard you correctly."

"Yes, Sarah, you did. Bitch auctioned it up to the highest bidder. Which, incidentally, wasn't me."

"Well who was it?" she asked. Cerberus yanked his head out of the garbage can, knocking it over onto the gravel drive. The dog worked his nose in the air then shot his attention straight up to a small jet passing overhead. What was it with this dog and planes?

"Yeah, I kind of trashed the computer before I had a chance to find out."

"Trashed the comp… Daniel, you don't sound very well."

"Really?" It always unnerved me how women could hear things in people's voices, subtle changes in inflection or tone that gave them a wealth of knowledge that men just simply weren't privy to. And being that it was Sarah, she could probably tell something was off just by the sound of my breathing.

"What happened?" she asked.

"Christ, what didn't? I puked on a man the size of a post office, then he put me down for a nap inside the trunk of his car. Darby tried to literally tear my face off, I had to pull a Houdini act out of the Wabash River with the help of a couple of stoner Samaritans, and was then pieced back together by a farm girl who practices medicine out of her apartment. Oh, and that was all after having to sit through an entire set by the Bowling Zygotes."

"But you only left twenty-four hours ago!"

I ran my tongue along a chip in my tooth. "Yeah, I live a charmed life. So, you think you can help me find out who bought it?"

"I'll try, sweetie." I could hear her heading up the stairs into her office.

I watched the two guys with the Jack Russell trying to calm it down as it yelped and squeaked at Cerberus. The girls fooling around on the swing sets pointed at him as he knocked the trash can over and shoved his head inside.

There was the dull clicking of tapped keys and then she said, "Okay, Daniel. What did she list it under?"

"Asher Family Heirloom."

More key taps. "Got it. Hold on while I check."

Cerberus was burrowed up to his shoulders in the garbage can again. But this time when he tried to pull his head out, the can stuck. The dog started to thrash, trying to throw the can off of his shoulders but it just sliced across the gravel, leaving dark gashes on the ground. He stopped and stood up with the garbage can still around his head, sticking out like the chimney of a steamship.

I walked over and helped him pull it off. Once his head was free, he barked, licked his lips, and started rifling through the garbage that was now spilled across the ground.

"No wonder your breath smells so bad."

"What's that, Daniel?"

"Nothing, I was talking to the dog. You find anything yet?"

Sarah made a weird noise as she sucked air through her teeth. "I found the handle of the person who bought it. I'm just now pulling up their personal info."

Cerberus had found the inner tube of an old bicycle tire and was chewing on it like it was a stick of gum. I righted the can and started tossing the garbage back inside. The dog took his prize back over to the Jeep, lay down on his haunches, and started tearing into the rubber with all the zeal of a jackal on a dead antelope.

"You'll never guess what this dog is eating now. A bike tire. You believe that? If I'd known I could have fed it garbage I wouldn't have bothered to buy it-"

"Daniel."

"Yeah?" There was silence for a moment. I shoved a finger in my ear and pressed the phone harder against the other. I couldn't hear her breathing. "Sarah? Sarah, are you there? Sar-"

"You have to get it back, Daniel."

"Yeah, I know I do. So tell me, who bought it, Sarah?"

"A man named Felix Romanov."

"I take it he's one of those bad guys you warned me about."

Sarah took in a deep breath then exhaled. "Felix? No, he's a weasel I could snap like a twig if only he had a spine. But I know the person he works for."

"And he's a bad guy?"

"No, Daniel, not a bad guy," she said. "The baddest guy."

I didn't know exactly what I was expecting. In a way, I guess I was hoping that it was just some loner with a serial killer fetish looking for souvenirs. At least then I knew I'd have little problem getting it back. But when Sarah started going all day player on me, I got a little nervous. "All right, who is he?"

"Not a he, a she. Eunice Deveroux."

"Eunice? What, is she like a hundred or something?" I asked.

"And seventeen. Now be quiet and listen."

"Wait a minute, wait a minute," I said. "You want me to get all worked up over some prehistoric biddy named Eunice?"

"Goddamit Dingo, do not fuck around with this!"

Cerberus lifted his head from his toy and stared at me, the inner tube dangling from his mouth like a dead snake. There were two things Sarah said that instantly put me on edge. First, she cursed. I've seen her angry before, but only to the point where she'd blurt out a 'darn' or maybe even a virulent 'crap.' But nothing ever as potent as 'fuck.' But second, and infinitely more disturbing, was the fact that she called me 'Dingo.'

I massaged the inside of my ear and put the receiver back to the side of my head. "All right, Eunice is bad. I get it."

"No, you don't. She isn't bad, Daniel. Rapists are bad. Murderers are bad. Cancer is bad. Eunice is evil."

I didn't want to dwell on what could possibly make sex offenders and wasting diseases merely 'bad' compared to some bint born during the frikkin' Cleveland administration. Well, at least it was nice to have it so plainly spelled out for me. "Ahhh, puke. Why couldn't I have been born into a normal family?"

"Charmed life, remember?"

I snorted into the phone. "Where do I find her?"

"I don't know," she said. "She isn't one to stay still for very long. The last I heard she was in Buenos Aires, but that was years ago. Let me make a call and find out where she is now."

If I was having this much trouble in Terre Haute, I would be as good as dead outside the country. I wondered if my passport was still good. "Who are you going to call?"

"Her great-granddaughter. We went to grade school together." The phone clicked and she was gone.

Cerberus had turned most of the inner tube into wet, foamy shreds. He held down one half with his melon-sized paws and dragged the other through his teeth. The rubber would snap back against the gravel, kicking up little clouds of dust.

"You aren't much of a Frisbee dog are you?"

Chomp. Rip. Snap!

Chomp. Rip. Snap!

"No, suppose not."

The Jack Russell and his two handlers were making way for a guy and his Rottweiler strolling through the park. The guy with the Rott was inked out, wearing boots, jean shorts, and an old-school Megadeth concert Tee with the sleeves cut off. The Rottweiler was thick and its head was twice the size of its owner's. And that was saying something. Hell, if it wasn't for the fact that I'd been with Cerberus for the past week, the Rott would have made me nervous. Now, it just looked cute in comparison.

The Jack Russell duo pulled their dog away while the Rott strained against its leash trying to get at it. The inked guy had to dig his heels in to keep his dog from getting away and mauling everyone in the park. Once he got his dog under control, he walked it straight towards me.
I was leaning against the Jeep when he came up and tossed an empty cigarette pack in the garbage can. His Rott caught Cerberus' scent and starting going bat-shit. The owner grabbed his leash with two hands and pulled, but the Rott started slowly dragging him closer and closer.
"Hey man," he said. "You may want to put your dog in the car. I don't think I can hold him for too much longer. Wouldn't want anything to happen to your dog there." Either this guy was blind or just fucking blind because even though Cerberus was laying on his haunches, he still towered over this joker's animal. But the last thing I needed were these two dogs tearing each other to pieces. There was no way I was going to be able to step in and break it up, which meant that the fight wouldn't stop until one of them was dead.

Cerberus kept playing with his inner tube, watching the howling Rottweiler twist and pull as it tried to break away and attack him. The guy started to slide across the gravel. He tried to wrap the leash around his wrist but lost his balance and tripped. The Rott felt its leash go slack and shot out at Cerberus.

Cerberus stopped chewing and just sat there with the shredded tube dangling from his mouth, watching as a hundred plus pounds of feral Rottweiler came barreling at him. It jumped and then…

Thwump!

Cerberus had pinned its massive head underneath one of his paws and just held it to the ground. The Rott started making these face-saving growls and barks, but they soon melted into heart-wrenching yipping sounds while Cerberus resumed chewing on his inner tube. The man stood up in a hurry, saw what was happening to his dog and took a step forward but stopped when Cerberus dropped the tube and stood up, eyeing the man while keeping the Rottweiler pinned underneath him.

"Call him off, man, call him off!"

My phone rang. I snapped at Cerberus and put the phone to my ear. "Hello?"

"I have good news and bad news, Daniel." It was Sarah.

Cerberus lifted his paw and the Rottweiler bolted. Inked man took off after his dog while screaming back at me that he was going to sue me for not having Cerberus on a leash. "What's the good news?"

"Eunice isn't in Buenos Aires."

Cerberus walked over and licked my hand. I wrapped my arm around his neck and scratched him under his thick leather collar. The dog smelled like an old campfire. "And the bad?"

And then I heard it in her voice despite the fact that I wasn't a woman. Of course, it wasn't some subtle inflection or nearly imperceptible waver. No, the note of worry in her voice was bleating like a trumpet blast.

"She's in Terre Haute."

Chapter 21: Garden of Gethsemane

2005-12-22T17:29:00.000-08:00

After I had hung up the phone with Sarah, I sat in the park and watched the clouds for a few minutes. The sun was getting lower and the clouds were showing signs of pink and orange. Cerberus stood next to me, staring up into the sky while casually chewing on his toy. I patted him on the back of the head and ushered him into the car.

"Uh uh. You're not bringing that thing into my Jeep. Drop it."

Cerberus snorted and then dropped the inner tube before hopping in.

When Sarah had spoken to Eunice's granddaughter, she had said the old hag was flying in at that very moment and was going to be staying downtown at the Terre Haute House. Which was interesting for two reasons. The first was that the Terre Haute House had been recently purchased by Darby's new beau, Eli Carson in another step toward expanding his ever growing business empire across the state. The second and most obvious was that the Terre Haute House had been closed for the past four decades because, well let's face it, who wanted to shell out two hundred bucks a night to a view of the bland Hulman Center and the sinus-melting stench of a paper mill. But it was a perfect meeting place to exchange the box for Darby's dowry. And if this Eunice Deveroux was half as bad as Sarah made her out to be, I needed to get the box back from Darby before Queen of the Stone Age got her carbon-dated mitts on the thing.

Cerberus and I drove back into downtown and stopped in a back alley behind the old hotel. The Terre Haute House was built in 1928 at the tail end of Terre Haute's swingin' days. It was seven stories tall, all brick, and its architecture had all the beauty and charm of a wet dishrag. The building was so dilapidated from lack of upkeep that it was a wonder the damn thing wasn't condemned decades ago.

The sun was low enough that the building's shadow spread over the back alley all the way to the railroad tracks that ran through the vacant lot behind it. There were several cars, all black and shiny, parked farther down the alley behind two large service doors in the back of the hotel.

I reached back and grabbed Cerberus' chain. I hooked one end to his collar and then wrapped the other tight around the passenger seat. He started whining and growling as if he couldn't figure whether it would be better to threaten me or make me feel sorry for him.

"Don't get bent out of shape, dog. I'm just going to have a look. I'll be right back"
He barked. Two inches from my face. My hair blew back and my ears rang. And then I almost passed out from the smell of his breath. "Sweet…mother…of Christ! You could scour the hull of a battleship with that breath."

I stepped out of the Jeep and checked the bandages on my head. I still had a headache, but whatever Heather did to fix the hole, she did a hell of a job. Usually when I was damaged this badly I'd have a fever by now.

Cerberus whined and barked. Thankfully a train coming down the tracks masked the sound somewhat, but I still waved at him to shut up. The dog stopped, but I could still hear his whines over the speeding train that was now thundering past.

Keeping to the shadows, I walked up to the cars and took a closer look. Darby's truck was there, looking as if it had just been driven out of the pages of a car magazine. I looked inside, but saw nothing. The other cars' windows were too tinted for me to get a good look inside but they all appeared empty as well. Other than Darby's truck, they all had rental plates. And the trunk door of one had a nice little dent in the shape of a familiar asshole's face.

Something moved in a window a few stories above and I ducked behind one of the cars. A man in his early thirties wearing a suit and sunglasses peered out the window and gazed at the train moving by. After the train had completely moved past, the man turned away from the glass and disappeared.

I stood up to make my way to the giant service doors but came to a sudden stop. I tried to move forward but couldn't take a step. Something was holding me back. I looked behind me to find Cerberus with his massive jaws clamped on the waist of my jeans. The chain was still around his neck and the passenger seat was now lying in the middle of the alley attached to the other end. There was a jagged white scar across the pavement where the dog had dragged it behind him. He let go of me, gave me a soft whimper, and then slapped at me with his tongue.

"What the hell did you do to my Jeep?" I ran to the seat and pulled at the chain as if it were strangling it. "I said I'd be right back. How could you…what am I supposed…my Jeep, it's…look what you did to the…and the…ahhh puke!"

He walked over and licked my face. I let go of the chain and wiped the dog slobber from my cheek. "Okay, okay. But we need to get some ground rules straight. First and foremost, no fuckin' around with my Jeep. Got it?" He just watched me with his black eyes so I made nice and unhooked the chain.

After scratching him under his thick leather collar, I turned and made my way to the service doors. The faded brown paint on the wooden doors was curled and chipped. I found a spot where most of the paint had eroded away and pressed my ear against the door, listening for any activity on the other side. I didn't hear anything.

The door squeaked as I pushed it open. I moved it just enough to allow me and Cerberus to squeeze through then shut it behind me. Inside it was dark and smelled like cold, wet cement. A few seconds passed and I was able to start making out shapes in the shadows. There were pipes sticking out of the walls where stoves and ovens used to be and the green and white ceramic tiles that were still on the wall were faded and cracked. The others were piled in dusty heaps on the floor.

I saw footprints in the dust.

I followed themuntil they stopped at the entrance to a dim corridor. There was just enough light for me to see about thirty feet in each direction. The carpet was old and faded and there were large stains wherever it wasn't worn through to the concrete beneath. Graffiti decorated the walls as far as I could see. It reminded me of Steve and Dwayne's place, only it didn't smell as bad.

There was movement.

I peeked around the corner and saw a man heading my way, dressed just like the guy I saw upstairs. He had a weapon of some sort dangling from his shoulder and he walked like he was on his way to the dentist. He had change in his pocket that jingled in time with his steps. I pressed my back against the door jamb out of sight. The guy was coming closer.

Cerberus crouched down next to me. I couldn't hear his growl but I certainly could feel it vibrating through the floor. I put my hand on his forehead and waited.

When the jingling was about to walk past, I jumped out and grabbed the guy by his left arm and dragged him to the ground at Cerberus' feet. The guy instinctively went for the hardware at his side, but before he could get a hold, I broke his nose with my palm and then snapped his wrist. His glasses were now nothing more than shattered frames. Dark bits of lenses stuck out of his skin as blood pooled down both sides of his face.

"Where's Darby?"

The man tried to reach for the gun with his other hand. I grabbed his fingers and bent them back, hard. He grunted then spit blood in my face. "Fuck you." He had a Slavic accent.
I didn't have time to mess around with twenty questions so I snapped at Cerberus. The dog came up to the man and then did something I didn't think was possible. He put the guy's entire head inside his mouth. The man flopped like a fish as he tried to pull his head past the dog's teeth, but when Cerberus' jaws tightened, the man froze.

"Last chance. Where's Darby?"

He made some kind of noise, but I couldn't make out what it was since he was half-way down Cerberus' esophagus. I gently pulled the dog's head away. The guy came out coughing and covered in blood and dog spit. "Oh God, the smell."

"It's nasty, yeah. Now answer me or it will be the last thing you smell on this earth."

The guy turned his head and spat. "They don't pay me enough for this shit."

"You have my sympathy, now tell me where she is or…"

Cerberus stood up and started sniffing. His nose worked the air for a moment then the dog bolted down the corridor into the darkness. There was a growl, a voice that went silent in mid-shout, and then nothing.

I grabbed the guy's broken wrist. "How many men are there? Unless you want me to feed you to that dog, answer me."

"Five. Well, four now, I think."

"And Darby?"

The guy gargled up a mouthful of blood and phlegm. "Upstairs. Top floor."

"What about Benoit? Is he here with you?"

The man nodded.

"Where?"

The man smiled through blood and dog drool. "Right behind you."

I felt something round and cold press against the back of my head.

"Well, I'll be damned. Why the fuck aren't you dead, Dingo?"

"Because God won't let me off that easy."

The man behind me laughed. "Well, I think He might have changed His mind about that. Now stand up. Slowly."

I stood up and turned around. Benoit was wearing a freshly pressed pin-striped three-piece with a solid green tie and holding a .45 caliber cannon to my head. Thick white bandages criss-crossed over his nose and his eyes were purple and swollen.

"You get women with a mug like that?" I asked.

He pressed the barrel of the gun to my forehead and pushed with each word. "Shut. The fuck. Up."

The bloody man at my feet struggled to stand upright and said, "Julius, he has a dog. I think it just took out Russell." The man pointed down the corridor in the opposite direction that Benoit came from.

Julius' bruised and swollen face paled a bit. He motioned at us with his gun. "Let's go."
He grabbed me and shoved me down the hall in front of him. We moved at a near jog. Benoit kept looking back over his shoulder as he pushed me along but then grabbed a fistful of my shirt and pulled me to a stop in front of an elevator. "Press the up button," he said.

I did and the doors opened. When I glanced down the hall behind us, I saw a large shape move out from the shadows. Cerberus stepped forward and snarled, materializing out of the darkness like congealed smoke. His teeth were dripping with blood.

Benoit shoved me in the elevator then barked to his bloody partner, "Jaco, kill it!" Jaco raised his weapon with his unbroken hand and fired down the corridor. It cracked like thunder.
I moved to hit Benoit but he was ready for it. He brushed my strike to the side and brought the butt of his pistol down on the back of my head. My knees turned to water and I slumped in the corner of the elevator.

"I can't aim with my left hand!" Jaco fired a few more times then jumped in the elevator with us and started pressing buttons in a wild panic with the barrel of his gun. "Come on, come on!" The doors started to close.

Cerberus' barks were raging down the hall toward us like automatic cannon fire. I could see dust and flakes of plaster fall from the walls with each sound he made. The elevator doors were almost completely closed by the time Cerberus reached us and his head was too wide to fit inside.

Benoit turned his gun away from me and aimed it at Cerberus, but the doors closed before he could fire a shot. Cerberus was outside, barking and clawing frantically. Jaco leaned against the wall with his gun pointed at the door in a white-knuckled grip.

"You know, I don't think my dog likes you very much."

The elevator started moving. Neither Benoit nor Jaco said anything, for which I was thankful. I wasn't in the mood to trade barbs with these two. I reached back and felt a trace of blood on the back of my head where I had been pistol-whipped. If I got out of this, my head was going to be nothing but a mass of scar tissue.

Benoit kept staring bloody and violent hate at me while Jaco kept his eyes and his gun focused on the elevator doors. A few seconds later, we stopped. We could still hear Cerberus barking seven stories beneath us.

"Get up."

I used the walls to balance myself. I felt woozy, but it passed once I was standing up. Jaco led us out of the elevator and down a less damaged hallway to what at one time must have been a luxury suite on the west side of the building. Jaco opened the chipped and warped double doors and we stepped inside.

The room was bare except for a few folding chairs and a small lampstand. It looked as dilapidated as the rest of the hotel but the wallpaper and plaster seemed to be holding up better than in the hallways.

Darby was there, wearing stiletto heels and a plaid mini-skirt as she paced and talked on a cell phone. Her hair was lying stick straight over her perfect shoulders and her corset top was open enough to be distracting to the most noble of gentlemen. Three heavies, all dressed as nicely as Benoit, flanked her as she moved around the room. But when she turned and saw me, she stopped. Her face went pale then gradually swelled to a bright red. She grunted something into the phone, flipped it shut and said, "Today is my lucky day."

She grabbed one of the folding chairs, motioned to her thugs and stormed toward me. "Grab him and come with me."

They all got a hand on me and started half-dragging, half-carrying me. "Darby, listen to me."
Darby turned and slammed the folding chair over my head with all the grace and ease of a professional wrestler. If it wasn't for the guys holding me, I would have collapsed right there.
Without a word, she led us to a smaller room that had a view of the vacant lot out back. She unfolded the chair then grabbed some frayed and brittle curtain rope piled in a corner. "Tie him to the chair." She turned to Benoit and said, "Julius, I have to go. She'll be here in five minutes." Darby pointed a French-manicured finger at me. "Watch him. And if ice-pack here tries to get out, shoot him in the knees. But don't kill him. I'll deal with him when I get back."
I flexed my wrists as hard as I could to allow a little slack in the rope when I relaxed, but the heavies tied me to the chair with knots that would have made Julie proud.

Darby walked up to me and grabbed me by the hair. She threw one of her long legs over my lap, straddled me, and then put her mouth against my ear. In a breathy voice she whispered, "Do you know how much you hurt me, Dingo? How much pain you gave me? I was devastated when I heard about you and your little whore." She wrapped one arm around my shoulders and pressed her body firmly against mine. "You have no idea the amount of suffering you caused me." Then Darby held her face an inch from mine and wiggled her hips as my body betrayed me. She smiled. "But you will."

"Darby, I-"

"Shhhh…" She put a finger to my lips. "Don't waste your breath here. Not now. Save it. Because when I come back, I'm going to show you what a Graeae really is." Her grip on my hair relaxed and then she did the last thing I ever expected.

She kissed me.

Chapter 18: Peaches

2005-12-15T21:44:00.000-08:00

Please see sidebar for previous chapters.

update: The RSS feed has been wonky the last few weeks so I've put up the Blogger Site Feed in the sidebar. Hopefully that will work for all you Feed junkies. I apologize for the technical difficulties. So don't give me shit about it or I'll sic the dog on ya. Yeah, you know which dog.

I knew something wasn’t right when the devil started licking my face. When you’re in Hell, you expect screaming, pain, the salty sweet stench of your own roasted flesh filling your nostrils. But when eternal torment consisted of the Big Man himself frenching your entire face, something in the state of Denmark wasn’t quite as rotten as it should have been. Where was the fire? Where were the iron maidens, the stretching racks? The flaming pools of vomit and feces? Granted, constant face licking wasn’t an ideal way to spend eternity, but I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed. I mean, would a little ritual disembowelment have been too much to ask?

I pushed the devil’s slobbery tongue away. Hellfire burned bright behind him. His wild hair and horns were nothing but jagged shadows surrounding his teeth like knives. Then I caught the smell of day old milk and ashtrays. The stench brought me fully awake and I completely opened my eyes to see Cerberus standing over me, the sun shining through the window behind him.

“What the hell is it that you eat, dog?” He just licked me again.

I sat up and became acutely aware of the stiffness in my face. I reached up and felt for the hole in my head but found only bandages. I had quite a headache, but nothing like before. Judging by the color of light coming through the window, it was mid-morning.

I was on a paisley couch, shirtless underneath a white sheet. The room was small and sparsely decorated with lithographs and potted plants. A bookshelf on the far wall was overflowing with college textbooks and bad fiction. A pile of my clothes was clean and neatly folded at one end of the couch.

And I smelled bacon.

There was movement from around the corner. I tried to stand but my head tried to twist itself from my body and I plopped back down onto the couch. A young woman walked into the room carrying a breakfast tray. She was cute, curvy with short blonde hair, and wearing gray sweatpants and a blue ISU sweatshirt. “Oh good, you’re awake,” she said.

Cerberus bolted over and tried to get at the food on the tray. The girl pulled the tray aside and scowled at the dog. “What do you think you’re doing? You’ve been fed already, now go away.” I didn’t know what was scarier, the fact that she didn’t run screaming the second Cerberus came for the food or that the dog actually walked away.

She put the tray on the couch next to me and said, “You may want to hurry up and eat that before your friend gets any bolder. I’ll go get you some coffee to go with your juice. You like coffee don’t you, because you look like the coffee liking type.” The girl smirked at my slack-jawed amazement and said, “I’ll get you some coffee.” And then she disappeared down the hallway.

So far, better than waking up in the trunk of a car.

It took me a few seconds to stand myself up without falling over, but once I was up and my head stopped spinning, I was able to put my shirt on while keeping Cerberus away from my breakfast.

I took a quick scan of the room: where the doors were, how many panes of glass in the windows I’d have to break through if I needed to exit in a hurry, lamp stands that could be used as cudgels, desk drawers I’d most likely find letter openers to brandish as weapons, that sort of thing. By the time the girl came back into the room, I had an inventory of a tiny makeshift arsenal going through my head.

She set the coffee down on the end table next to me. “How is it?”

I nodded, always keeping her in my periphery. “It’s good. Kind of hard to fuck up toast, though.”

“Oh, I can do it. Want me to show you?” She held out her hand and gave me a half smile.

Usually it took me at least three sentences before coming off like an ass to someone I had just met. But she was being a good sport about it. Which made me feel worse. “Sorry,” I said.

She gave me a wave of dismissal then sat down on the couch next to me and slapped her legs, calling Cerberus over. “What’s his name?”

“Cerberus.”

“Cerberus? That’s original.” The dog bent over slightly so she could reach up and scratch his ears as she talked like she was playing with an infant. “You’re such a good puppy, aren’t you, Cerberus? Yes you are. Yes you are.”

I’ve had the damn thing a little over a week and already it would take me two hands to count the number of times that dog made me want to piss myself. And yet this wisp of a girl played with him like he was nothing but a puppy fresh from the pound. I checked my head again just to make sure my brain hadn’t fallen out.

She looked up. “Is the bandage coming off? I can fix that if—”

“No, no. Just checking to see, um…who are you?”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” She gave Cerberus a tweak on the ear and then held out her hand to me. “I’m Heather. I live next door to Dwayne and Steve. They dragged you over here after you passed out last night.”

“Oh yeah.” The box, the auction, the destroyed bedroom. Why couldn’t my brain have fallen out? Maybe the hole just wasn’t big enough. I started to play with the bandages.

“Leave that alone. You don’t want to pull out any of the stitches. Just relax. Here, let me take a look.” Heather reached over and gently pulled the bandaging away.

As she inspected me, my eyes traced the smooth line of her neck down to the round curve of her collarbone. Her warm breath brushed across my face in time with the swelling of her chest as her fingers moved over my wound. I forgot about the pain I was in and became lost in her smell. It wasn’t her perfume or her shampoo or the rank of someone who hasn’t bathed in days, but her. Just the sweet, subtle scent of a woman’s skin.

“Looks pretty good if I do say so myself,” she said.

As she pulled away, her body heat disappeared with her, leaving a vacuum of cool, empty air around me. I had to concentrate on keeping my teeth from chattering. “You stitched me up?”

“Well, only because the stapler was empty.” I pulled away and gave her a frown. She just laughed and said, “Don’t worry, I’m a nurse.” She set the bandage back in place.

“They let nurses stitch people in this state?”

Heather grabbed Cerberus around his massive neck and hugged him, holding him tight to her. She was in danger of getting lost in his fur. “Normally no, but I grew up on a farm with seven brothers who loved to roughhouse, so you’re not the first boy I’ve had to sew back together.”

I hadn’t been called ‘boy’ in a long time. Of course I figured that to Heather, every male other than her own father was a ‘boy.’ Which was sweet. It was nice to see that kind of innocence. I didn’t get a chance to see it every day. Then again, that’s probably because on the rare occasions that I did, I usually took that innocence, threw it down in the mud and stepped on its throat. I mean, let’s face it. You only really start to notice how dirty you are when standing next to something that clean. And it was always easier to spread the filth around than take a bath.

“I take it you had dogs on this farm?”

“Mmm hmmm.” She stopped stroking Cerberus’ mane, but the dog shoved her with his forehead until she started again. “We had a couple of German Shepherds, some Irish Wolfhounds, even had a dachshund once. But never anything like him. What is he, a mix between a Newfoundland and a Buick?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know of any breed that grows that big. I’ve seen some Great Danes that you could plough fields with, but nothing like this guy.”

“Good thing he has such a sweet personality.”

Sweet? I was having a hard time attaching the word ‘sweet’ to the animal that dropped a couple of Vegas heavies after they took a crowbar to the back of his head. It seemed to me that Cerberus didn’t want to knock Heather down into the mud either. But it was only a matter of time. Sooner or later she was going to brush up against one of us. And our kind of dirt didn’t wash off.

“Well, thanks for putting Humpty Dumpty back together again, Heather. But I should probably get out of your hair.”

“Don’t go. I really like your dog.” Heather kissed Cerberus on his nose. The dog sneezed and then pushed his head forward for another scratch. “He could definitely use a bath, but,” she turned to me and smiled. “I like having him around. Besides, I think you should stay another night. I would say go to a hospital, but Dwayne and Steve told me about your situation. So, since you can’t let a doctor look at you, settle for a nurse. Make sure that wound doesn’t get infected.”

If it wasn’t for the gaping hole in my head and the nauseating sense of my impending doom, I would have liked to stick around and play naughty nurse with her. Although I doubted that’s what she had planned. It’s not easy getting a girl randy for you when you’re oozing pus and blood from a gash in the noggin. It can be done, it’s just not easy.

“I’m sure it will be fine. I’ve had to stitch myself up enough times to know… wait a minute. Exactly what situation did Dwayne and Steve tell you about?” My voice came out harsher than what I intended and I would have cringed had it not been for the fact that my face was as stiff as cardboard.

Heather sat up straight and gave a quick glance to the pencil on the desk across the room. Apparently she had a little mental arsenal of her own. But growing up with seven rough and tumble brothers on a farm meant she could no doubt handle herself. I just wish I hadn’t made her feel as if she was going to have to.

“Just some stoner tale about mobsters throwing you in the river after beating the crap out of you and that if you show up in a hospital they’ll find you and,” she raised her hands and did finger quotes in the air, “clip you.”

“Clip me?”

“They watch a lot of bad television.”

I nodded and gave her my best disarming smile. But instead of it relaxing her, Heather’s eyes just kind of drew together in an empathetic grimace. “Actually, that’s mostly true,” I said. “But they’re mobsters with a little ‘m,’ not a big ‘M.’”

“What’s the difference?”

“Big “M” mobsters are your Capones, your Gottis. Small ‘m’ mobsters, like the prick bastards who did this to me, are of the less organized variety. Usually just heavies and rent-a-thugs.”

Heather pulled her legs up onto the couch and sat cross legged, her hands in her lap like a yogi. “So a couple of small ‘m’ mobsters beat you up and threw you into the river.”

“Well, they threw me in the trunk of their car first, but yeah. I eventually made it to the river.”

“And what exactly did you do to make them do that?”

I could tell that the way she was holding her feet underneath her that she would be able to lean back and give me a face full of heel if I did anything threatening. I couldn’t blame her, though. I’d be skittish too if a couple of stoners dropped a bloody and broken mark in my living room in the middle of the night.

“They stole something of mine and I tried to get it back.”

She nodded. Every trace of kindness and hospitality that she had when she first came into the room was now replaced with the stoic detachment of a doctor listening to a terminally ill patient accuse her of misdiagnosis. “What did they steal?” she asked.

“A family heirloom.”

“What, like a brooch?”

“Brooch? No. No, a box my dad made when I was a kid. Hand carved, lot of sentimental value.”

“And a bunch of small ‘m’ mobsters are willing to kill you for it?” Her face crinkled. “Wait a minute. If they threw you in the river, wouldn’t they think you’re already dead?” I nodded. “Then they wouldn’t be looking in the hospitals for you.”

I shook my head. I could feel the mass of abused nerve tissue rattle inside my skull. “No, they wouldn’t, but there are other people who would. So it’s best I stay out of the hospital.”

“Let me guess. Big ‘M’ mobsters?”

“Only in the sense that they’re organized. They’re mostly businessmen and politicians. Normal guys for the most part, they just don’t like me very much.” It was a sobering thought, the number of people who wouldn’t mind seeing my body washed up on the banks of the Wabash.

“What’d you do to make a bunch of politicians angry? Vote Green or something?” Heather seemed more relaxed now. She had one arm around Cerberus and rested her chin on the wrist of the other, watching me like I was telling ghost stories around a campfire.

“Something like that,” I said. “I gave some testimony that put some of them in a…not so favorable light.”

“This was at your brother Michael’s trial, right?”

“Ah, so my reputation precedes me. I can only assume that means that the eggs were poisoned?” Hopefully it was dosed up enough that it would kill me quickly. Or slowly. At this point, I didn’t much care any more.

“Not the eggs, the toast. Told you I could fuck it up.” After I did a double take, she twisted her mouth into a mischievous smile and said, “Dwayne and Steve told me. Kept going on about you being related to someone in P-Dot too and getting them backstage passes or something for helping you out.”

“Oh. And you thought you could get a piece of that action, too?” It figured. No one was this nice without expecting a payback. Damn. The pretty ones always had to have an angle.

“Me? Nah. I was never a big fan of theirs. Sorry.”

Faith in humanity was restored. “Believe me, that’s a plus as far as I’m concerned.”

Heather sat back and kicked her feet up on top of Cerberus like he was an oversized coffee table. The dog didn’t seem to mind. “So why do they call you ‘Dingo’?”

I looked at her out of the corner of my eye. “A turn signal would have been nice.”

She laughed. “Sorry, it’s just kind of a strange nickname, that’s all. So where’d you get it? What’s it mean?”

I just nodded and took a sip of coffee. I waited for her to say something, to fill the silence, but she didn’t. Heather just sat with her feet on Cerberus’ back, waiting for me to talk. “My mother gave it to me.”

She leaned forward like I just told her that leprechauns were real. “Really? Your mother?” Her drawl seemed thicker now. “No offense, but it doesn’t sound very flattering coming from your mother.”

“It wasn’t meant to be.”

I could tell Heather was struggling with the concept because her left brow kept sliding closer to the center of her head in a confused and lopsided scowl.

“Why would your mother give you a nickname like that?” she asked.

“You sure do ask a lot of questions.”

“Well, I don’t usually have bodies freshly dredged from the river dumped on my doorstep, so I think it’s okay to ask a question or two. And I’m curious.” Heather leaned forward, her head turned to the side as she squinted at me. “I’ll tell you how I got the nickname ‘Peaches.’”

“That isn’t some pet name your boyfriend gave you, is it? Cause if it is, you need to get out more.” Up until then, it had never crossed my mind that she might be involved. I had to admit that I didn’t like the idea.

She gave me a playful scowl and said, “My dad gave it to me. I was chubby when I was a kid and he used to say that my cheeks looked like peaches.”

“Talk about unflattering.”

“Well, he meant it in a sweet way. When I got older and thinned out he still called me peaches, but he said it was because my kisses were so sweet.”

“Okay, that’s just creepy.”

She hit me with a bit of her farm girl oomph. “Don’t be gross. It’s actually more creepy that you think it’s creepy.” I couldn’t tell if her smile was one of sincere disgust or playful frustration. “Now since I showed you mine, you show me yours. Why’d your mom call you Dingo?”

I tried to smile but my mouth wouldn’t work. “Heather, I really don’t want to talk about it, okay.”

“Oh, come on.” She pointed to her puffed out cheeks. “Peaches. I think sharing the fact that I used to be fat deserves a little reciprocity.”

“Seriously, Heather. I’m not really in the mood to—”

“Why not? Come on, tell me. Why’d your mom call you Dingo?” Heather launched into a pretty authentic Australian accent and said, “Did you eat her baby or something?”

I shot her a glance that made her blanche and said, “Enough. I told you, I don’t want to talk about it. My mom and I never really got along, so please, Heather, just let it go.”

Heather’s face twisted and her lips pulled back against her teeth. “Sorry. Didn’t realize it was that sensitive a topic.” She got off the couch and grabbed my mug. As she lifted it off the tray, I flinched, raising my shoulder and hand up to protect my face. When the blow didn’t come I looked up and saw her staring at me with a soft look on her face. “I’ll get you some more coffee.”

Cerberus walked over and put his head in my lap. I scratched him between the ears and rested my head on the back of the couch. I didn’t understand it. From the minute I opened my mouth I was an asshole to this woman who took me in, fed me, and stitched me. She had every reason to clock me with that coffee cup. Hell, every other woman I’d dated or married would have launched it straight at me ten minutes ago. But not Heather. She just wanted to fill it with more coffee.

What shaped a person like that? Honestly, I wanted to know.

Chapter 19: 'Tis Pity She Ain't a Whore

2005-12-15T21:28:00.000-08:00

After she got back with the coffee, Heather and I sat on the couch in silence for a few minutes. Her eyes were locked on the back of Cerberus’ head as we waited for the uncomfortable moment to end. Sometimes it was hard for someone to understand the kind of twisted and dysfunctional relationships some people had. When you grow up with June grinning in the kitchen while Ward interrupts reading his newspaper to ask “How’s it going, Champ?” the concept of Sid and Nancy as the nexus of a nuclear family is a little hard to swallow.

“Look, Heather,” I said. “I really appreciate you going through all this trouble for me. The stitches, breakfast, everything. But I can’t stick around. I really have to go.”

The girl scratched Cerberus behind his ears. She didn’t look at me. “I’m sorry, Ding…er, Dan.”

“Dingo’s fine, Heather.”

“Does your mother still call you that? Dingo?”

“Heather.”

“Sorry.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “She doesn’t call me much of anything anymore. She’s dead.”

“Oh. I didn’t know. I’m sorry.” She looked at me with the strangest expression. It took me a moment to recognize that it was genuine sympathy.

“Don’t be. I’m not.” I reached over and gave Cerberus a pat on his nose. “You about ready, dog? I think she’s spoiled you enough.”

Heather gave the dog another hug and started rubbing him behind his ears. We were both sitting there, quietly petting Cerberus when she asked, “What’s a brass hand?”

“Where the hell did you hear that?”

“You talk in your sleep.” She looked up from the dog. “Didn’t you know that?”

“No, I didn’t.” God knows what must have come out of my mouth, but the fact that she still cooked me breakfast meant that it couldn’t have been that bad. “What exactly did I say?”

Heather shrugged her shoulders and pulled her legs up on the couch, curling herself into a ball. “Mostly gibberish. Something about a box and brass hands. Didn’t make a whole lot of sense. I just figured you were dreaming about trashing Dwayne and Steve’s apartment.”

“I think that was more of a nightmare then a dream.” I had no idea how much damage I caused, but I was pretty sure that no matter how bad it was, their apartment couldn’t look much worse than how it started.

“I’ll talk to them on my way out.”

I found the boots Dwayne gave me next to the couch and started pulling them on. My right foot was still tender from walking on the railroad tracks without a shoe, but the discomfort was hardly noticeable once the boots were on.

“So what is it?” Heather asked again. “You said it a few times while you were out.”

I had no idea that I talked in my sleep and it would certainly explain quite a few things. I guess I was going to have to start sleeping with my mouth duct taped shut. “Like you said, just gibberish.” I stood up.

“No, I said mostly gibberish. You saying ‘please God, keep the ferret off my crotch saddle,’ yes, that was gibberish. But saying ‘must stop the brass hand’ over and over again didn’t seem like just random babbling.”

Duct tape wouldn’t be enough. I’d need a staple gun. “Brass Hand is just something I used to call my ex-wife.”

She slowly nodded her head. “Ah. Ex-wife.” Heather looked down at her hands as she rubbed them together. “That would explain the nightmares. I have to say, your family comes up with some really strange nicknames.”

I chuckled. “Well, her last name is Graeae. It means something in Greek mythology, something to do with Medusa. I just used to tease her about it.”

“So what do brass hands have to do with Medusa?”

I finished lacing up the second boot. “Aside from having snakes on her head and turning people to stone whenever she looked at them, Medusa also had hands made of brass.” Cerberus put his head down by my feet and sighed. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he was bored.

“So instead of calling your wife ‘snake head’ you called her ‘brass hands.’ No offense, but I can see why you’re divorced.” Her mouth twisted into a condescending smirk.

“That’s not why she divorced me.”

“Then why did she?” I just frowned at her. “Okay, okay. I’m done being nosey.” Then Heather gave me a disarming look and said, “Seriously, I’m done.”

I couldn’t help but smile. There was something about her that I found fascinating. I guess it was the way she actually tried to close the holes in my head instead of opening them. She was definitely pretty, and if I were younger I wouldn’t have felt so creepy about it. But I just couldn’t picture her tied up in my closet wearing nothing but leather manacles and a smile while I read her the collected works of Shakespeare. Ben Johnson, maybe. Or even John Ford. But not Shakespeare. Of course, maybe that was a good thing.

“Well, again, Heather. Thanks. But I really do need to go.” I gathered my things and she went with me to Steve and Dwayne’s. I knocked for a full minute before Dwayne stumbled to the door. His eyes were welded shut with sleep and he smelled worse than I did.

“Dude, you’re alive,” he said.

“Yeah. I’d say thank you, but I’m not so sure I’m happy about it.”

He waved me inside. I walked in with Cerberus next to me and Heather behind me, scuffling along in her Hello Kitty slippers. The living room was a dark stain of cigarette ashes and cheap beer.

“Steve’s pretty pissed at you, dude. I think you trashed his Dell, wholesale.”

I nodded. “That’s why I’m here. I owe you guys. Big. So I’m here to pay up.”

Dwayne’s eyes shot open. “Sweet. Let me grab Steve-o.” He disappeared into the mess and came back dragging a plaid boxered Steve with pillow lines on his face.

Steve gave me a head shake and mumbled a ‘whassup’ as he scratched his ass. Then he yawned a hello at Heather who replied with a polite wave.

“Sorry about your room,” I said.

“As long as we get backstage passes and I get a new computer, it’s all good,” Steve said. His breath was worse than the dog’s.

“I'll do you one better. You guys know about the contest P● is running?” They nodded and grunted. “The winner gets 250 thousand dollars spending cash and a week on tour with the band. All you have to do is figure out where they got their name.”

They were both wide awake now. The week with the band was pretty cool, but 250 G’s to a college student living two blocks from the only crack house in town was like manna from heaven.

“Okay, where’d they get it?”

“You guys know what happens if you don’t shake too well after taking a piss?” The two of them stood there like two slack-jawed simians before the great monolith. Then their eyebrows pulled down.

“Dude, that’s so lame.”

“No shit. Anyway, contest ends in a few days, so you two may want to step to it.” They turned and disappeared in a cloud of plastic cups and dirty laundry.

I reached over and scratched Cerberus. “Come on, dog. We’ve got to go.”

Heather grabbed my arm. “Hold on a second.” She rushed over to a desk, grabbed a pen and an opened envelope and started scrawling. “Here.” She handed it to me. “Call me if you have any problems with the wound or if you ever, you know, need anything else stitched up.”

I looked down to see her name and phone number on the envelope. There was a little heart next to her name. “That’s my cell,” she said. “You can reach me any time.”

I smiled, moving toward the door. “So, Heather. You a fan of Jacobean theater?”

Chapter 16: Trolls Under the Bridge

2005-12-08T18:24:00.000-08:00

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The water was hard. There was a splash and then cold wetness, but instead of sinking down into the longing embrace of the underlying bilge, my already ruined face smacked against something hard. I was lying face-down in about three inches of water.

I craned my neck to keep my face above the surface. Yards of black river extended in both directions, but there was something solid underneath me. I sat up and realized that the river was swollen to the point that the water flowed just inches above the top of the concrete supports directly under the bridge. I was on the flat surface of a large, upright cylinder that supported the massive iron stilts of the trestle. Had Benoit thrown me out just two more feet farther, I would have been playing Jonah to some freshwater whale by now.

I was getting sick and tired of this shit. For once I wish I would stop catching these lucky breaks and just die already.

Shadows moved around me. I looked up to try and see what the hell was going on. Above me, light from the train was reflecting off of the trestle in bitter angles, casting moving shadows as it came closer. Water rushed over my ankles as I scuffled closer to the upright support beam where tree branches, paper cups, and a host of other debris was trapped against its base by the river’s current. On the beam, about chest high, there was a rusty, jagged gash in the iron beam. I positioned my wrists against it and worked the rope into the gash.

The beam was slick with mildew and the rope was too wet to catch against the sharpness of the edge. It kept sliding as I tried to cut the rope. My arms ached and I was exhausted.

The train screamed overhead, shaking the entire bridge. Bits of dust and debris rained down on me in sharp, irritating bursts. I tried to use my legs as leverage to help the rope dig in, but between the shaking from the train and the slime below, my feet slipped and shot out from under me. My feet were above the water for a second then came down with a splash. Problem was, there was no concrete support beneath where they hit and they slid down into darkness. The tag team of current and gravity yanked me away from the beam, but the rope that held my wrists together was lodged in the gash and was keeping me from being swept out into the dark water. And it was tearing my shoulders apart.

That’s when the rope decided to tear.

My arms splayed wide and there was an immense release of pressure and pain in my shoulders, but the reprieve was short lived as the water swept me out away from the beam. The concrete support was still beneath me but my feet were over the edge now where the current was swirling and sucking me in. My fingernails scraped against the lichen covered concrete but couldn’t find purchase.

I flailed about, grabbing desperately at anything until my hands found one of the tree branches lodged against the beam. I held onto it and tried to pull myself back onto the concrete, but the current whorled around me and tried to suck me straight down. It slammed me against the side of the support and I had to hold my breath as I went under.

The branch was slick but my grip held. I pulled myself above the surface and onto the support. Hand over hand I hauled myself up with the branch and forced my way back to the beam. It was cold, slimy, and sharp but I held on to it like a newborn to its mother’s breast.

I stayed there until the train passed and then for a while longer. Even though it was a hot summer night, I shivered. The iron was cold against my face and the sound of the water was soothing. I thought it was a good time for a nap.

“Damn, dude, you okay down there?”

I looked up to see two faces looking down at me from the framing just beneath the tracks.

“Yeah. I’m Jim-fuckin’-Dandy.” They just stared at me like I was some specter from the deep. And I could smell the stench of weed coming off of them in waves. “How long have you guys been sitting there?”

“Oh dude, we saw the whole thing. Man that was fucked up!” The kid who spoke was about twenty, thin with short well groomed hair. The other one looked a bit older but like he took less care of himself. His hair was longer and his face was riddled with acne.

“You guys saw the whole thing, huh? And you didn’t think to, oh I don’t know, help?”

“We heard you on the tracks and thought you might be cops.”

“Hautian cops don’t throw people from bridges.” I stood up, making sure I had a firm grip on the beam.

“Hey, we don’t want to get involved in any mob shit, either, man. Those guys looked like serious players.”

It took me a couple of tries to keep from sliding as I shimmied my way up the beam. Once I got up high enough to grab some of the support beams, the two stoners reached out to help me. They pulled me into a little alcove littered with cigarette butts, beer cans, and several pairs of underwear. I didn’t ask.

“Thanks,” I said. The discomfort of wearing wet denim was distracting enough that I almost forgot about the horrible shape my head was in. My t-shirt was a sodden and blood stained rag and one of my boots had come off while I was struggling to keep from drowning.

Stoner number one squinted at me. “Jesus dude, is that your skull?”

“Probably.” I entertained the idea of inspecting the tear in my head but was afraid that if I actually felt my exposed skull I’d pass out. “You guys students?”

“Yeah, I’m Steve. This is Dwayne.” Stoner number one nodded at the mention of his name. “We should get you to a hospital, man.”

“No, I need to get to the library. Is it still open?” Steve and Dwayne looked at each other like I was the one baked out of my mind. “Look, guys, I don’t have time to fuck around. You two are students, right? So how late is the library open?”

Dwayne looked at his watch. “About another hour.”

“Good.” I started to climb up to the tracks.

“Uh, they don’t have any doctors at the library, dude.”

My arms were turning into limp noodles. I straddled a wooden plank and rested for a second. “No, but they have computers.”

“They won’t let you use them without a student I.D.”

“Well, then I guess it’s a good thing I ran into the two of you. Let’s go.”

Steve started waving me off as Dwayne glanced back and forth between us. “Look man, if it’s all the same, we’re just going to stay here and smoke out. We don’t want any trouble.”

“Well if you don’t want trouble, I suggest you start climbing.” I stood up on the beam and started up.

“Hey, dude. We can appreciate that you were just dumped in the river. That sucks, wholesale. We’ll call you an ambulance if you want, but we’re not taking you to the library. We’re not stupid. We know how this shit works.”

I stopped. “Yeah? And how’s that?” I asked.

“Dude, if somebody sees you with us, those mob guys’ll be throwing us in the river. I’m not sticking my neck out for you. I don’t know who the fuck you are or why they dumped you. For all I know you’re a child molester or something.”

“Would you feel more comfortable if I showed you some ID?”

Steve took a step forward and said, “Look, we don’t want to get mixed up—”

“I don’t have time to argue. Please, I need your help. Now would you just get your shit together and start climbing.”

Dwayne stood up, his hands balled into fists at his side. “I told you. We’re not going anywhere with you. Anybody dumped by the mob must be up to no good. We helped you out of the river, so we’re cool. But if you think you’re gonna start bossin’ us around, I’m gonna have to open up a can of whoop-ass on ya.”

That did it. “Let me explain something to you, Dwayne.” I jumped back down to the little platform. Dwayne and Steve both took a step back. “In the past week I’ve been tied down to a bed and raped by a ferret, had my head opened up with a crowbar, run over by a Cadillac, had my ex-wife try and turn my face into a handbag, beaten bloody, stuffed into the trunk of a car and then tied up and tossed into the river for fish bait. I’ve been drinking cans of ‘whoop-ass’ for the past four days straight, so if you want to open up another one, then you go right ahead. Because I’m still thirsty.”

Truth was Steve and Dwayne could have easily kicked the shit out of me and tossed me back in the river and there would have been little I could have done to stop it. I had lost a lot of blood and I was so tired I could barely stand. Aside from the mangled state my head was in, my jeans were starting to chafe. But I was banking on the hope that these two jokers had never seen a man with half his face hanging from his skull crawl out of the river after a couple of mobsters left him for dead.

“Whoa, man, it’s cool. We just don’t want your mob friends coming after us, that’s all.”

“They won’t. As far as they know, I’m dead and the two of you were never here. So you’ve got nothing to worry about. I’m running out of time guys. Let’s go.”

We all made it to the top of the tracks and started the tightrope walk back to terra firma. “You sure you don’t want to see a doctor, man?” Steve asked. “No offense, but you look messed up wholesale, bro.”

“No time. I’ve got an auction I’ve got to bid on.”

“EBay?”

I nodded as I took careful steps along the railroad ties. After the nightmare of the last fifteen minutes, I didn’t need to twist an ankle.

“Why mess with the library? Just come to my place. I’ve got DSL. I can get you hooked up.”

I watched Dwayne hit Steve and give him a stern look. These guys wanted nothing to do with me and I certainly didn’t blame them. But walking into the library in my condition was going to end up with someone calling security. Steve’s idea sounded like a better solution.

“Sounds good, Steve. But we have to stop and get my Jeep first. Hey, what size shoes do you wear?”

“Nine, why?”

I pointed to my shoeless right foot. “That’s too small. How about you Dwayne. What size do you wear?”

“Man, what are we getting out of this? I mean, I know you’ve got it rough and all, but why do I have to be the one runnin’ the charity ward?”

I stopped. We were about fifty feet from where Darby and her crew had pulled me out of the trunk. The car was gone. “You a P● fan, Dwayne?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Yeah, they’re pretty cool.”

“Well, if you guys hook me up, I’ll hook you up. Deal?”

“You got tickets or something?”

For the first time in a while it turned out to be a good thing that Rick was my brother. “Rick Asher’s my brother. I think I can do better than just tickets.”

Dwayne actually smiled. “Rick’s brother? No shit. Right on!” We stepped off the tracks and into the grass. It felt so much better on my naked foot than the tar and splinter covered railroad ties. But after a few seconds I noticed that Dwayne wasn’t walking with us. Steve and I stopped and looked back.

Dwayne was ten feet away, staring at me. “Rick Asher’s brother. That means you’re related to…”

It was like this every time. Guilt by association. “Yeah.”

Dwayne’s blank stare turned into a wide-toothed grin. “That’s so cool!”

“Oh yeah,” I said. “Fan-fuckin’-tabulous.”

As we walked back to the Jeep, I wondered if I could get Cerberus to eat them both in a single sitting.

Chapter 17: 5001

2005-12-08T18:00:00.000-08:00

The stoners knew a shortcut back into town and it only took us thirty minutes to make it back to the Jeep.

“Dude, what the FUCK is that?” Dwayne asked.

“It’s a dog, you moron. Now get in.”

Dwayne walked back around to the driver’s side with me and Steve. “Man, I ain’t never seen a dog like that. No way am I getting in over there.” He hit Steve on the arm. “Dude, you go.”

“No way. You called shotgun, not me.”

“Boys! Unless you two want to see a real shotgun, get in the fucking ride. The dog isn’t going to hurt you.” Cerberus would most likely kill them before they felt any real pain, so technically it wasn’t a lie.

They both got in on the driver’s side but Dwayne forced Steve to get in first and scoot in behind Cerberus. The dog tracked them both with his large head. He shoved his nose against them and sniffed. Both Dwayne and Steve froze, their bloodshot eyes wide and unblinking.

“Which way?” I asked. Neither one of the boys said anything. “Steve, where do you live?”

“Um, 13th Street. Turn left at the light.” He pressed himself as far back in the seat as he could while Cerberus worked his nose over Steve’s entire front like a vacuum cleaner.

It took only a few minutes to get to their apartment. It was one in a four apartment house located in one of the seedier neighborhoods just off campus. Lights and loud music were coming from one of the top apartments. The other three were dark.

Dwayne and Steve both got out on the driver’s side. I grabbed my backpack from the back and then let Cerberus out on the other side. “Roommates having a party?” I asked.

“Yeah, Brandon must be doing something.”

Cerberus ran to the curb and pissed on a Cavalier while the three of us walked up the porch steps. Steve was still fiddling with his keys when the dog walked up to me.

“He can’t come in. No pets allowed.”

“Sure, you tell him that.” Cerberus sat next to me staring at Steve. Even sitting down the damn thing was almost looking at him eye to eye.

“He’s not going to go killing anybody is he? There’s probably a lot of people upstairs. And I don’t want to lose my security deposit.”

“He’ll be fine.”

We made our way upstairs to an open apartment. People were crammed into the living room, all of them dancing while a DJ was spinning unfashionably rusty tunes in the corner. Colored lights flashed in the smoke. The floor was moving up and down like a trampoline as the partiers moved in time with the music. Another hour of that and the old house was going to collapse.

Steve turned to me and shouted. “You want something to drink?”

“No. Your computer. Where is it?”

He gestured with his chin and led me past the throng of dancers. All of them stopped to stare as we made our way past, Cerberus getting most of the looks. We entered a bedroom where a couple was getting amorous on a mattress and box spring shoved into a corner of the narrow room.

“Hey! How about knockin’ first.”

Steve threw his hands into the air. “Dude, my bed!” The girl grabbed a blanket and covered herself. “What’s wrong with your room?”

“Oh, man. That Zeta chic is passed out in there.”

“So?!”

Dwayne couldn’t stop laughing. But while Steve’s domestic crisis was unfolding, I stepped past them all and sat down at the computer. The guy under the covers said, “Come back later, guys. We’re almost done.”

The girl peeked out from under the covers. “We just started!”

“Aw man, and I just did laundry.” Steve stormed out past Dwayne as Cerberus walked over to me, his giant tongue lolling out of the side of mouth.

“Dwayne,” I said. “How about getting me some shoes.”

“Man, you better hook me up wholesale, that’s all I got to say.” He followed after Steve.

I started tapping keys and tried to ignore the swelling pain in my head. All of my stitches were gone and even though the river had washed away most of the blood, the hole was still leaking pretty badly. After I found the bid, I was going to have to scan the room for something to stop the bleeding.

Searching eBay was going to be tough. The problem with selling something like this was that you couldn’t openly advertise it. Not so much because of the nature of the thing, but putting anything connected to my brother online was about as bad as hawking Nazi memorabilia.

“Well fuck me running.” There it was.

Asher Family Heirloom.

Handmade keepsake box crafted by Rick Asher, Sr. Father of famed P-Dot guitarist, Rick Asher, Jr. Hand carved from Brazilian Ash and Chilean Rosewood, this beautiful work of art was used as a jewelry box by Mrs. Asher for years and carries the very spirit of their family heritage.

That sly little kitten. She was selling the box and only hinting at what was inside. She never once mentioned Michael’s name. In fact, the only place Michael came up was in the close-up photograph of the top of the box where our names were all carved into the wood. Darby used Michael’s name as the example of the craftsmanship. But the idea that my mother used it as a jewelry box was completely off base. My dad had made it to hold sassafras roots as treats for us kids. We would always come home from school and grab a couple of roots from the box and suck on them until their flavor was gone. And no matter how many times we raided that box, my dad had always managed to keep it full.

The girl behind me started whining. “I can’t do this with that thing staring at me.” I looked back. Cerberus was at my side, but he was watching the couple with an uncomfortable intensity.

“Hey man, can you keep your dog from doing that?”

“No.” There were only ten minutes left. I logged in and placed a bid. The current bid price was eighty-five dollars. I bid ninety and set up a max of five grand. I didn’t have the money, but Rick did. And there was no way I was losing this bid.

After it showed me as the highest bidder, I grabbed a fresh pair of jeans and a t-shirt out of my backpack and started to change. When I pulled my shirt over my head, I almost passed out from the pain.

“Can you do that somewhere else?” the boy asked.

If it wasn’t for the bolt of electric razor wire slicing through my brain pan, I would have kicked the two of them out. Literally. Instead, I ignored them and tried for the second time in just a few hours not to vomit.

Once I got some dry clothes on, I collapsed in the chair and watched the screen. Cerberus put his heavy head on my lap and sighed. Something pretending to be music was thudding from the other room, making every vein in my head throb. I tried to wash away the saccharine sounds with the memory of a Gutter Fern melody and the image of their delicious guitar player, but the music was just too damn loud.

Behind me, the two kids were getting dressed. Cerberus lifted his head when they got off the bed but then put it back on my lap once the kids had given up the idea of confronting me. I scratched him behind his ears.

As I stared at the screen, I noticed that at the bottom next to the words ‘Serious Buyers Only,’ Darby had listed an email address and a website to contact for payment options. The email address was brasshand@gmail.com and the site link led to a ‘brass hand’ search result on Wikipedia. Any serious buyers would know exactly what it was she wanted.

I hit refresh. Two minutes left on the bid and I was still top buyer at ninety. Dwayne walked in with a pair of tan work boots. Steve followed behind him with a red plastic cup in each hand.

Dwayne set the boots on the floor. “There you go, dude. You find what you were looking for?”

“Yeah.” I pointed at the screen. “Just in time, too. I owe you guys big for this.”

“Just make sure you hook us up. Like with backstage passes or…hey, Mr. Asher. You sure you okay?”

I turned and looked at him. “I’ll be fine.”

“You’re shakin’, man. Look, the hospital is just up the road—”

“No. Thanks, but no. I can’t go to a hospital.” Steve held out a plastic cup. I waved him off. “A drink is the last thing I need right now.”

“It’s water. Heather gets home from her shift in an hour. Why don’t you have her take a look at you when she gets back.”

“Yeah, man,” Dwayne said. “Don’t go dyin’ on us. That would harsh the festivities.”

I took a sip of water and hit refresh again. When the screen pixilated back into existence, I felt as if the back of my head just fell away and my brain oozed down the back of my neck. The auction was over and I wasn’t the winning bidder. I had lost.

By one fucking dollar.

I stood up, kicking the chair out behind me. Cerberus took a step back and gave a short, deep bark audible even over the mess of noise coming from the living room. I was only vaguely aware of what I was doing as I tossed the chair out the window. At that moment, everything was in season. The desk, clothes in the closet, posters on the wall, everything.

The music stopped and people gathered inside the room. I was still in a blind rage, trashing everything I could get my hands on as they poured in to see what the racket was about. Cerberus was standing on the bed, growling at the partiers and keeping everyone at a distance. After a few minutes of primal screaming, I stopped. I couldn’t suck in enough air. My chest was heaving and my heart was ready to burst. I looked at my hands and at the shredded poster I was holding. Then I noticed the familiar yellow lettering lined in black and the dark silhouette of Rick’s face on the torn paper. My mind turned to static. I yelled so hard that blood spurted from the open wound in my head and spattered on some of the horrified college students watching me have my breakdown.

Then I was done. I stood there panting, out of breath with a ruined P● poster in my hands and a face straight out of a Romero flick. I was having trouble seeing out of my left eye and my legs wouldn’t stop shaking.

Dwayne took a step closer and said, “Dude, I think that is your skull.”

I nodded and put a finger to the hole above my eye.

“Yeah. I think you’re…ri…”

Chapter 14: Bowling Zygotes

2005-12-02T17:04:00.000-08:00

Between a buggy Firefox 1.5 and an annoying Blogger, posting has been a royal pain this evening so I apologize for the tardiness. I am also aware of problems with the feed and will try to address that as soon as possible as well.

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The Verve was a hip college bar on the corner of 7th and Wabash. It started as a hole-in-the-wall dive bar that had open-mic night for all the undergraduate folkies and angry poets who forgot that the 60s were over before they were even born. Now, the bar had transformed into Terre Haute’s hotspot. Although there were half a dozen popular hangouts for the local twenty-somethings, The Verve always had the best music. Most of the heavyweights from Indy, Chicago, Cincinnati, and St. Louis played there when they came to town. It was the one saving grace to Terre Haute’s practically non-existent music scene.

I left Cerberus in the Jeep with twenty ounces of frozen t-bone and a makeshift bowl of water. Since the only thing to do for people too young to get into the bars was cruise the street, I kept the dog chained to the seat in case he decided to chew his way through the top to get at them.

An eclectic mix of people were already milling outside the front door to the bar, from wannabe frat rats to baked-out jazz cats dressed to the nines. With the bands they had on the bill, it didn’t surprise me.

The bouncer taking cash at the door was a block of flesh most likely hired for his size rather than his ability to use it. He didn’t look like he could go two rounds with anyone who could hold their own, but if he connected just one good shot with his weight behind it, he probably wouldn’t have to.

He was chatting up a blonde when he asked me for I.D. He looked up. “What happened to you?”

“Crowbar.”

“Crybaby?”

“Crowbar.”

“Oh yeah? You’re not gonna be causin’ trouble in my club, are ya?”

“Me? No, I’m harmless.”

The bouncer dismissed me with a smirk and went back to talking with the blonde.

The inside of the bar was thick with smoke. The first band was already under way as lights flashed and danced. On stage, a tiny brunette wearing a camouflaged wife-beater was throwing down on a Strat while her band chugged away at a blues shuffle behind her. She tilted her head back, closed her eyes, and tossed out a run that would have made hack-boy back at the Music Shoppe race home to his mother. Sweat dripped down her neck to her cleavage. Her hands worked over the fretboard with a mastery that—I was willing to admit—made me jealous. Damn. All the molded pop queens and sculpted divas in the world couldn’t hold a candle to a woman who knew how to work an axe. It was one of the sexiest things I’d ever seen.

I had to force myself to look away and scan the scene for Darby. Bodies were pressed in all the way from the stage to the bar in the back. The smoke made it difficult to see anything with any certain detail, but I didn’t see her anywhere. I weaved my way through the crowd, getting dirty looks from those who thought I was a little too aggressive in my journey across the room. I reached the back where the soundman was twiddling with knobs and sliders on his board.

“Say man, what’s the order tonight?”

He grabbed a piece of paper from a table behind him and handed it to me. There were six bands listed, each with a series of technical notes pertaining to their instruments, number of bandmates, mic placements, etc.

“Who’s this playing now?”

“Gutter Fern. Band out of Chapel Hill.” When the front girl crooned into the microphone, the soundguy gave one of the myriad sliders a gentle nudge with his finger. “They’re playing House of Blues in Chicago all next week. If you can get up there, go see ‘em.”

Living in Los Angeles had made me a bit jaded. All the bands I’d seen were always polished, groomed, with every member looking like they just came from central casting. They all bled together. You could take a person from one band and dump them into another and never know the difference. And neither would the band. Hell, when Rick’s band auditioned bass players after the original left to run a tattoo parlor in Bangkok, they had made their final decision based on the guy’s fucking hair. It was all about image. What face to put on a song meticulously designed to have the greatest amount of mass appeal. But after years of listening to plastic clones, it was overwhelming to see such raw, unpolished talent and natural beauty dominating the stage.

I pulled my eyes away from the band and looked at the paper he gave me:

Gutter Fern

Bowling Zygotes

Rusty Spoon’s Blues Review

Corset

Quadrivian

Darby’s band was up next. I swam through the crowd again, ordered a beer and then found a dark corner in the back.

When Gutter Fern finished their last song, the bar erupted. It was good to know that people still had taste in music. But the poor front girl was mauled the second she came off stage. Half a dozen guys were there, proffering beers and their phone numbers. The rest of Gutter Fern had to usher her backstage before she was trampled over. But as the band were squeezing through the back door, a man and a woman were coming in. The man was carrying a large industrial fan that sat on top of a six foot pole. The woman was carrying a rivet gun. The B.Z. show was starting.

The couple split the crowd until they reached the center of the viewing area about ten feet from the stage. The man set the fan down and the woman blasted rivets into its base to anchor it to the ground. He gave it a shake to make sure it was solid in the ground and then motioned to the back door. The Bowling Zygotes started to file out on stage.

Darby was in the lead.

When I saw her, I felt my heart press against my chest cavity like it was trying to force its way through my ribs and run as far away as possible. Seeing an ex is always a difficult thing to do. The odd familiarity was vertiginous. I used to know her better than anyone, but now she was just a stranger, some dark mimic imitating a memory. She was thin but curvy, wearing black baggy pants and an Anime belly shirt that accentuated the smooth lines of her neck and shoulders. Her hair was pulled back into two topknots that sprung from her head like horns.

I took a swig of beer then felt the stitches in my head. The shadow I was hiding in didn’t feel dark enough.

Darby hopped behind the drum set, twirled her sticks and started in on a simple groove. The rest of the band, all dressed in black suits and orange ties, filed past toward their instruments. One by one they fell in behind Darby’s groove as the people in the crowd bobbed their heads in time.

The man by the fan kicked it on as the lead singer walked out to wild cheers. He had a mullet, an handlebar mustache, and was wearing nothing but an antique, red and white striped bathing suit. His beer gut pressed dangerously against the seams. He stepped up to the central mic and stared at his pale feet for a few measures before holding up a large piece of cardboard that had the words ‘Braving the Storm’ written across it in black marker.

The groove changed to something fuller, darker. The singer put on a pair of snow goggles then struck a pose with one foot in front of the other, his chin high, chest puffed out and his shoulders pulled back. The fan created violent swirls of smoke in the colored stage lights.

Darby played a fill and the band picked up the intensity. People in the crowd started shaking their beer bottles and spraying them into the back of the fan. The singer was soaked in a matter of seconds as he stood stoic while gallons of alcohol showered over him in an amber mist.

For ten minutes.

Fortunately the band was talented enough to keep people interested in what could only be described as performance art. The artsy kids in the crowd were digging the shit out of it and were running back to the bar to get more beer to pour in the fan. Even the mid-west fashionistas too out of the loop to realize their apple martinis were no longer in vogue were getting into the show.

The band took turns at the musical center while bathing boy braved his storm of lager and ale. But even with all the activity, I never took my eyes off Darby. She was like a metronome. Mechanical and flawless, her every movement a tick of an atomic clock. But she had no feel. No emotion. No soul. Her movements were stilted and graceless. If she had half the feel of Gutter Fern, Darby would have been a monster. Instead, she was nothing more than a drum machine with great tits.

Their set ended 45 minutes and one pony keg to the fan later. The band stepped off the stage and headed straight for the bar, but Darby ducked out the back door. I swallowed the last of my beer and pushed through the crowd to follow her.

I moved through the door as the next band were coming through with a fleet of equipment. The back room was littered with drum sets, amps, and groupies of both sexes trying to get in with the musicians. But Darby wasn’t there.

Of course I really had no idea what the hell I was going to do once I found her. Well, no idea other than torture her until she told me where she put the box. And then maybe for a little while after as well. You know, just to be thorough.

A door in the back of the room with a sign above it blinking ‘Exit Only’ was being held open with a beer bottle. I stepped to the door and peaked through to a dark parking lot. I saw a flash of light then Darby’s face was cast in an orange glow as she lit a cigarette. She leaned back against her black, pimped-out ’59 Ford F-100 and blew a cloud of smoke into the hot, humid air.

“You know that smoking makes you age prematurely, don’t you?”

She casually turned her head toward me as I stepped out into the night. “Dingo. I heard you were in town. You see the show?”

“Yeah. It was pretty good. But isn’t the whole art thing getting a bit old?”

“The kids still dig it.” She took another drag. “How’s your face? Looks like you caught the wrong end of a baseball bat.”

“Yeah, it seems I’ve been catching the wrong end of a lot of things lately.”

Darby rested her chin in her hand and gave me her coyest smile. “Aww, does your pussy hurt? Would you like me to get you an ice pack for that?” She tossed the cigarette to the gravel and ground it with her heel. “Thanks for stopping to see the show, Dingo. But you’re not welcome here. It’s time for you to leave.”

“I’m not going anywhere until I get my box.”

Darby stared at me with the same glint in her eyes as a poker player sitting on a straight flush. “Oh Dingo, that’s so cute.”

“Cute? What’s cute?”

She folded her arms and laughed. “That you actually think you have a choice in the matter.”

It was too late. The shadow behind me moved before I could react and my teeth rattled together as something heavy caught me on the back of the head. I tried to stand after I hit the ground but my legs weren’t working. Black spots were floating in front of me.

I tried to push up off the ground, but a heavy foot pressed into my back. “What do you want to do with him?” someone asked.

“I don’t know.” Darby’s voice sounded like it was coming through a subway tunnel.

The foot standing on my back kicked me over and I had to fight the urge to vomit. I looked up and saw two figures standing over me. Darby and another person that looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on who he was.

“Where’s your dog, asshole?”

Oh yeah, I remembered him now. Julius Benoit. I opened my mouth to speak but it wasn’t words that were trying to come out.

“Don’t worry about it,” Darby said. “Just put him in the trunk of the ‘Benz. Get the others to help you.”

Benoit grabbed me with his meaty hands and yanked me upright. “It’s ride time, mother fucker. I hope you—”

My head swam and I puked. Now I don’t know if it was just the head nausea or if the few beers I had during the show helped, but when I threw up, it hit Benoit’s face with a wet slap before running down the front of his pretty silk suit in streams of brown and orange.

“AHHH! You…cocksucker. My eyes! It burns! It BURNS!”

He let go of me and I fell to the ground in fetal heap. I was still laughing when I finally fell unconscious.

Chapter 15: "On the Banks of the Wabash"

2005-12-02T16:24:00.000-08:00

Everyone should ride in the trunk of a car at least once in their lives. Not that it’s some profound rite of passage or an impetus to a great epiphany, it’s just that I’d hate to think I was the only schmuck that ever had to do it.

However, waking up inside the trunk of a car is an altogether different situation. At first there’s the disorientation, then the panic, and finally the remembering of the painful events that led to you being bound in total darkness and covered in your own vomit.

My mouth tasted like I had eaten a car battery. Thankfully, I no longer felt nauseated but my head was on the verge of falling apart. Between the stitched wound over my left eye and the dull ache in the back of my head, it felt as if my skull had been skewered with a flagpole. Of course the pain and nasty taste in my mouth were small prices to pay to have seen Benoit eat a face full of sick.

My hands were bound behind my back and my feet were hobbled in a way that I couldn’t spread them more than eight inches apart. I felt around but didn’t find anything I could use to cut through whatever it was that held me so I tried to weasel my legs through my arms. It didn’t work.

The sound of the tires changed. Instead of the dull whine of rubber on pavement, I heard the crunch of gravel and then the soft whir of dirt underneath. I bounced around as we hit several bumps and holes. A few minutes later, the car stopped and the engine shut off. I couldn’t hear any other traffic.

At one time or another, just about everyone ponders what their last moments might be like. Car accident, cancer, skydiving malfunction, and—the always preferable—in bed of old age. But of the dozen different ways I thought it would end for me, being driven out to the middle of nowhere and shot like a rabid dog was…well to be honest, it was always one of the more likely scenarios. But on the bright side, there were always worse ways to die.

The car doors opened and the vehicle’s weight shifted as people stepped out. I wriggled onto my back and pulled my knees into my chest. As soon as the trunk started to open, I kicked as hard as I could. There was a dull thud and a muffled curse. The trunk flew open and two men reached in and grabbed me.

“That son of a bitch!”

As they pulled me out of the trunk, I saw that Benoit had his head tilted back and was pinching his nose. Blood was running over the dry vomit stains on the front of his suit. Darby was standing with her hands on her hips, scowling at me while my two handlers shook me until I stopped struggling.

We were somewhere on the edge of town, just north of campus judging by the angle of the dormitories visible over the trees. There were street lamps off in the distance and there was the constant drone of traffic somewhere out of sight. The car was parked next to a set of railroad tracks that ran off into a cluster of trees before disappearing into the darkness.

“You should have stayed in L.A., Dingo,” Darby said.

“I have to agree with you on that.”

Darby closed the trunk then hopped onto the back of the car. “Hold him up straighter, boys. I want to get one last good look at him.” She lit a cigarette and leaned back to admire me. Her lips were tilted in a half smile as her eyes roamed over me. She shook her head. “What the hell was I thinking when I married you?”

“Darby, don’t do this. Please.”

“Oh God, please, no begging.” She blew a cloud of smoke at me. “If you start with all that sniveling, don’t-kill-me shit, I’ll end up puking on poor Julius.”

Benoit tilted his head to the side and gave her the bird.

“Kill me?” I laughed. “Please, do me a favor. I couldn’t give a rat’s ass if you killed me, Darby. I’m just asking you to please not do anything with it.”

“Oh, I’m not going to use it,” she said. “I’m going to sell it.”

Puke.

It looked like Sarah was right, as she usually was. “Well then let me buy it,” I said. “I’ll pay any amount you want. Just tell me how much.”

Now Darby laughed. It was a beautiful sound, made only more so by the way it echoed through the trees around us. “You’re a fuckin’ heavy for B-rate porn stars, Dingo. You can barely pay your rent. Besides,” she looked at her watch, “the auction ends in a couple of hours and I don’t think you’re going to be around to place any bids.” She crossed her arms and pursed her lips.

“Hold on a second. Back up.” I took a penguin step forward. “You mean to tell me that you’re selling my brother’s soul…on eBay?”

“Well,” she shrugged her shoulders. “Yeah.”

I honestly thought I could feel the sanity oozing out of all the holes in my head. “Okay, look. I know I’m broke. But Rick has money. He can give me—”

“I’m not selling it for money, Dingo.”

My heart felt like it had just turned to lead and fell through my abdomen. Sarah had called it. The Graeae wanted her dowry back.

Well, good news was that I’d most likely be dead when Darby finally got it. “There’s got to be another way to get what you want,” I said.

“Really? How?” She kicked herself off the back of the car. “Tell me Dingo because I REALLY want to know.”

“Goddammit, woman, listen to me!” One of the thugs punched me in the gut and dropped me to my knees. But it didn’t matter. I figured I had only minutes left to convince her of how bad her idea was. “He murdered children, Darby! Do you understand that? Some of those people were kids. Is getting your dowry back worth letting that out into the world again?”

Darby was all fists when she came at me. I fell onto my back, my tied hands pinned underneath me. She was always a tiny thing, but when her knees landed on my chest I couldn’t catch my breath. “It was everything to me you unfaithful prick! I gave up everything for you and I want it back!” She grabbed at the wound over my left eye and started pinching out my stitches with her fingernails. I tried to fight but she grabbed my hair with her other hand. “Hold him still!” More hands grabbed me. “I became mortal for you, Dingo, and then you went off and fucked some whore! So I don’t give a shit if your brother skull-fucked a convent of dead nuns, you owe me!”

Darby was a wild thing. All claws and spittle tearing away at my face. Somewhere in the middle of it all I screamed. My throat strained and I tasted the familiar tang of blood pooling in my mouth, but all I could hear was her. “Is that how you show love? By screwing some slut? Answer me, mother fucker! I sacrificed my birthright to be with you and you do that to me? Is that how you show love?!” Her fingers started digging into the wound. “I swear I’m going to pull the face from your skull and use it as a God! Damned! PURSE!”

Bright lights flashed over me for a second. The thugs that were holding me down while Darby played NipTuck were now pulling her off of me. She was still screaming at me but her words were unintelligible now. Darby had become completely unhinged. She kicked and spat at me, but I hardly noticed over the warm wetness drooling down the side of my head.

I leaned to my side and saw another vehicle parked a few feet away. Darby was being ushered to the open rear door. Someone was waiting in the back seat but there was too much blood in my eyes for me to see who it was. But once they got Darby to the car, she shrugged them off of her and said, “Dump him.” She got inside, closed the door, and the car sped off, leaving me covered in a fresh layer of dust.

“Now you’re going to get yours, asshole.” Julius’ voice was cracked and nasal. “Cut his feet loose. I ain’t carrying the bastard.” One of the thugs pulled a knife and slit the bonds at my feet. “Now walk.”

They pushed me onto the train tracks and started moving me into the darkness. “You going to tie me to the tracks like some old-school villain now?”

Benoit smacked me on the back of the head. “Shut the fuck up.” Normally it wouldn’t have fazed me, but he hit me on the same bloody spot he hit me earlier and my feet buckled. The thugs caught me before I completely collapsed.

Once I got my feet under me I said, “You know, smacking me around isn’t very good for your wardrobe.”

“I can buy new clothes, now shut up.”

I wanted to argue with him, taunt him, and generally just be a pain in his ass. But my energy was gone and my head was a mess. I blinked some of the blood out of my eyes and saw the silhouette of a large metal structure up ahead. As we got closer I saw that it was the support system to the train trestle that went over the Wabash River.

The ground beside the tracks gradually fell away as we moved closer to the banks of the river. I smelled the sweet scent of dew and wild grass as well as something that reminded me of marijuana. The air was heavy and wet. Mosquitoes flocked to the open feast on the side of my face. After about twenty yards, the tracks were too high off the ground to safely jump. I could hear the sound of water moving up ahead.

The two thugs each had an arm as they carried me to the center of the bridge and brought me to the edge. Benoit stepped up next to me and put his hand on my shoulder. “This is actually kind of nice,” he said. “Out in Vegas we have to dig holes in the desert for people like you. But here,” he waved his hand out to the black mass of flowing water beneath us, “we don’t even need shovels.”

“My body will wash up on shore sooner or later.” That was a sentence I never thought I’d hear myself say. Then again, I didn't know why not. This was pretty high on my list of ways I thought I was going to die.

“Yeah, well I don’t feel like going back for bricks. It doesn’t matter anyway. If your body shows up, boss-man’ll make sure none of this comes back to us or your ex.” He patted my shoulder.

One of the thugs hit Benoit on the shoulder and pointed up the tracks. “Train’s coming.”

“Shit.” Being in the middle of the trestle meant they’d have to outrun the train since the only quick way off the tracks was either in the water or climbing the support structure. And none of these guys looked like the climbing type.

“All right, throw him over.”

“Should we shoot him first?”

Benoit laughed. “And let him miss out on the fun of drowning?” He wrapped his massive arm around my shoulder and pulled me close. “I want you to think of me on your way down.”

“Train’s coming fast. We gotta go.”

I tried to pull my hands apart, but the rope was too tight. Benoit put his large hand to my back. “‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,’” he said. “You idiot.” He laughed as he pushed me over the edge.

Chapter 12: Cthulu Marching

2005-11-25T15:21:00.000-08:00

As a holiday gift from me to you, I will be posting TWO chapters every Friday from now through Christmas. So email me or leave a comment or two and let me know what you think. And if you dig it, feel free to leave a tip in the tip-jar.

Please see the sidebar for previous chapters.

It took a t-bone steak, his chain, and a tow winch to keep Cerberus from getting away every time a plane’s shadow sped across the ground. When I finally got him into the jeep, he was panting for the first time I’d ever seen. His tongue was a giant slab of dripping pink lolling out of the side of his cavernous mouth as his broad chest moved like the bellows of a blast furnace.

Sarah gave me a small bag with some homemade goodies inside and a larger bag filled with various meat stuffs for the dog. In L.A. you could get anything from Thai food to kosher Cambodian cuisine. But there wasn’t anything out there that came close to home cooking. And even though Sarah was a bit of an urbanite herself, that woman knew how to throw down in the kitchen.

“What do you think she’ll do with it?” Sarah asked.

“I have no idea. I’m afraid to think about what’s going through that twisted little head of hers.”

Sarah nodded. “Think she might sell it?”

“Sell it? I suppose she could, but I don’t know who the hell would want to buy it.”

“Well, there’s a market for that kind of thing. A pretty big market.”

I shrugged my shoulders and watched Cerberus track the airplanes flying overhead. “Eh, not too worried about it.”

“Just promise me you’ll be careful, Daniel,” she said.

“Don’t worry, Sarah. I can take care of myself.”

She grabbed my arm and escorted me to the driver’s side of my Jeep. “I’m sure you can, dear, but that’s not the point. I know the kinds of people who might be interested in this sort of thing. I ran in that circle for a while myself. They can be very dangerous. Very. So I’m telling you, be careful.”

For the first time I’d ever noticed, Sarah looked her age. I hugged her and gave her a kiss on the forehead. “I will. But this is Darby we’re talking about. I know how to handle her.”

“Really? And how many scars on that pretty face of yours are from her? This woman shot you in the head once already, Daniel. I don’t think she’ll hesitate to do it again. Not over this.”

Shoot me in the head? Darby would rape me with a soldering iron if given half the chance, so I’d count myself lucky if she showed me the quick and quiet mercy of a bullet to the brain. “She’s just doing it to be a pain in my ass, Sarah. She wanted that damn thing ever since we filed for divorce. And I sent my lawyer’s two oldest children to Harvard making sure she didn’t get it. She’s just pissed that I actually got to keep something out of the settlement.”

Sarah shook her head and crossed her arms. “If Darby simply wanted to be a pain in your ass she would have asked for alimony. Think, Daniel. She doesn’t need money, and even though she’s crazy, I don’t think she’s crazy enough to do anything with it herself. I think she has other ideas.”

“It doesn’t matter what she has planned for it,” I said. “Sell it. Keep it. I don’t care. I’m getting it back.”

“Listen to me. I don’t think she’s going to keep it. I think she’s going to sell it.” Sarah put her hands to the sides of my face. “And not for money.”

I gently pulled her hands away and said, “Well I know her, Sarah. She’s not just going to give it away.”

“That’s what bothers me.” Sarah started twirling her hair as she stared off into open sky. “I have an idea of what price she’s going to ask for. And there are only a handful of people who can pay it.”

“Well, if the price she’s asking for is my head on a plate, it’s going to be a seller’s market.”

Sarah grabbed me by the shoulders and squeezed. Her hands dug into my flesh with a strength that belied her tiny frame. “Don’t make jokes, Daniel. This is serious. I spelled that box so she would be blind to what was inside. And it was open for, what, thirty seconds? A minute? And she found it. She’s been looking for it the whole time, Daniel.”

I tried to shrug my shoulders, but her grip held me. “The woman hates me, Sarah. Of course she’s going to—“

“No! I mean, yes, she hates you. But this isn’t about you. She doesn’t care enough about you to go through all this trouble just to hurt you.”

Sarah was wrong, and it wasn’t just my suddenly wounded ego talking either. I once watched Darby spend half an hour berating a checkout girl for accidentally short-changing her five cents. She had the girl, the manager, and several of the rubber-necking customers in tears before it was all over. Later that night the checkout girl had tried to kill herself by slitting her wrists. Darby’s tirade wasn’t the sole reason, but it was the thing that had finally pushed the poor thing over the edge. When we had heard about it a week later, Darby had sent the girl a bouquet a flowers with a card that said, “Remember: down the lane, not across the street.” Over a fucking nickel. My ex-wife was a sadist and she most certainly would go to all this trouble to mess with me.

And it wasn’t exactly like she didn’t have a reason.

“Okay, then why?” I asked. “What other possible reason could she have for doing this other than just to make my life miserable?”

It was a sad and frightening thing seeing a frown on Sarah’s face. She aged in just the few hours I was there. Wrinkles grew in places where there used to be smooth, pale skin. Not only did I devalue her property, but I drained her life away as well. I’d have to start wearing a cape and calling myself ‘Count Dingo.’

“Darby’s a Graeae, Daniel. You think you understand what that means, but you don’t.” I tried to pull away but she held me fast. “Sweetie, I’m not trying to be mean but you have to understand. If you keep going on dismissing all of this as ‘nonsense,’” she looked to Cerberus in the Jeep then back to me, “it’s going to get you killed. You have no idea what Darby sacrificed in order to marry you.”

“If you’re trying to tell me I’m an asshole, I already—”

“No, no, Daniel. That’s not what I’m saying. Not at all.” Her voice softened into something close to music. “My point, sweet boy, is that I think your ex-wife is going to try and get her dowry back.”

I used to have this nightmare when I was a kid. I would be sitting at home, all alone when I would hear this low rumbling cadence, thundering in the distance. I’d rush outside to see what was making the noise and there, just barely visible over the horizon was some dark, Lovecraftian giant making its way toward me. Slowly, steadily, its god-like footsteps brought it closer. And I would always wake up paralyzed and nauseated. Even though I knew it was a dream, I couldn’t handle the fear and hopelessness of knowing that no matter how fast I ran or in what direction, that thing would find me.

I’d rush into my parents’ room, screaming and crying. My dad would crawl out of bed and tell me the same thing he told me every time I had that dream: “The only thing you need to be afraid of in this house, son, is me.” He was usually standing in his underwear with his eyes crusted over with sleep when he said this, thus insuring I’d return to bed and dream of zombies instead.

But the idea of Darby becoming a Brass Hand again made me long for those nightmares of marching Cthulus and undead dads.

“She can do that?”

“If she cuts the right deal with the right person, yes, she can.”

I steadied myself against the Jeep. I didn’t buy into Sarah’s theory that Darby didn’t care enough about me to mess with me. And if she ever got her dowry back, I’d be fucked six ways from Sunday. “I’ve got to go.”

Sarah smiled, and a bit of her youth returned. “I know.” I hopped in the Jeep and turned the key. “Ooh!” She said. “Hold on!” Sarah turned and ran into the house. She came back out waving something over her head. “You can’t forget this!”

She handed me the picture of her and my mom. “I told you, Sarah, I don’t want it.”

“And I don’t care. I know your mother certainly has her faults, but she really is a good person. Besides, it’ll help remind you that you’re not the only one with an albatross around your neck. Keep it. Please, Daniel?”

I took the picture, shouldered Cerberus out of the way, and shoved it in the glove compartment. “It’s Dingo, remember?”

Sarah reached through the window and put her hand on my cheek. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to.

I dropped the Jeep into first and drove away from the only woman who ever truly loved me.

Chapter 13: Hack in the Back

2005-11-25T15:19:00.000-08:00

The stretch of Highway 41 that ran from the Region down to Terre Haute meandered through an endless ocean of cornfields that were occasionally interrupted by distant farm houses or “blink” towns—towns that you could literally miss if you were to blink as you drove by.

A few times Cerberus and I passed something that broke up the monotony of the flat fields. There was a man-made pond on top of a hill just waiting for someone with a shovel and a twisted sense of humor to play wrath of God with the inhabitants below. There was an oak tree, large enough to rival some of the smaller redwoods I’ve seen, that sat in the middle of several hundred acres of soybeans like some green godling lording over its subjects. There was even a small, neglected cemetery hidden behind a small stand of tall grass and dying bushes that probably hadn’t seen a fresh corpse in over fifty years.

When Cerberus and I drove past the cemetery, I gave it a cursory glance. Most of the tombstones were visible above the overgrown grass and the nearby trees kept it hidden from the road. Cerberus sniffed the air and turned his head, keeping his eyes on the tombstones until they disappeared behind us.

The sun was almost down by the time we crossed over the Wabash River and into Terre Haute. Cerberus noticed the smell before I did. I could tell by the way he curled his lips. I did the same thing when the heavy odor from the paper mills finally hit me. But sadly, that’s what the town was known for.

Terre Haute wasn’t very big, just big enough to fit the definition of a city. Of course any metropolis that boasts a couple of college dormitories as their tallest buildings can’t be too far along the urban scale.

The last I heard, Darby owned a house over in Allendale just off of the ninth fairway in the closest thing to a gated community Terre Haute could offer. But getting to her house wouldn’t be as easy as driving up to Benoit’s. People here would notice a beat up and road worn Jeep cruising their neighborhood. The last thing I needed in this state was attention so that meant calling in some favors. Unfortunately, no one owed me any. And since I only knew a handful of people in town, I was going to have a pretty hard time finding help.

I wound through town across the Indiana State University campus. The Music Shoppe was a small, mom and pop shop squatting on the corner of its block. I went inside and couldn’t help smiling at all the guitars hanging from the walls. It was a guitar player’s candy store. Vintage Strats, reissue goldtops, even some extremely rare boutique instruments that you couldn’t find anywhere else crowded every square inch of space inside. It was one of Terre Haute’s best kept secrets and if I wasn’t there on business, I would have enjoyed myself.

Someone in the backroom was butchering a Clapton riff as a man in his early fifties with a white beard and a Zildjian hat sat behind the glass counter flipping through the pages of Modern Drummer and chewed on the straw from his Big Gulp. He glanced up when I walked in, stared at me hard for a few awkward seconds before giving me a nod and going back to his reading.

I stepped behind a stack of used amp heads and pretended to examine their prices. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him glance at me from under the brim of his hat, casually close his magazine and walk into the office.

Puke.

I went back to the front door, flipped the ‘Open’ sign to ‘Closed,’ and then threw the deadbolt. I grabbed an immaculate Gretsch hollowbody from the wall and pulled out my car keys. The old man’s voice was coming from the office, but he was being too quiet for me to make out what he was saying. But I didn’t need to hear it to know what it was.

I walked up to the counter and placed the guitar down. There was the dull, plastic sound of a phone receiver hanging up just before the guy walked out of the office. When he saw me at the counter smiling at him, he stopped. His beard was stained yellow around his mouth. He didn’t return my smile.

“Is Pete working today?” I asked.

Kris Kringle stared at me with his mouth slightly open as the squirrel in his head tried to fire off enough neurons with its exercise wheel to figure out how to answer me without tipping me off to the cavalry that would soon be charging over the hill.

“Uh, he moved to Nashville a couple years ago. Something I can help you with?”

“Yeah, I wanted your opinion on this guitar.” I pointed to the Gretsch on the counter. “Do you like it?”

“One of the best in the store. You can plug it in if you wa—“

“No, that’s okay.” I pressed my car key against the guitar and held it there.

Santa’s eyes did this morph from wide shock to narrow anger. “Hey, be careful. That’s worth three grand and unless you got the cash pay for it, you might not want to scratch it.”

“Three grand? Wow, that’s a lot of money.” I started tapping my key against the guitar. Just hard enough to be heard.

“Stop that!” He came forward a step.

“Ah ah!” I held the tip of the key against the body with one hand and held up a single finger with the other. I dug deep for my best Cagney voice and said, “Another step and the broad gets it.” Father Christmas stopped. “Now, who’d you just call?”

“Whoa, let’s not do anything stupid here.”

“Well I certainly don’t want to. But if you don’t answer my question, I won’t have much of a choice. So who’d you call?”

“I called…” he started to say, but then he studied my face, his eyes lingering on my black eye and stitches. “You know what,” he said as he took his hat off and tossed it to the ground. “You damage that guitar, not only are you going to pay for it, but I’m going to give you a shiner to match the one you’ve already got.”

“Fair enough. Just tell me who you called and the Gretsch walks away.” Was it wrong that I was having fun?

“I called a supplier about a shipment. Now get out of my store.”

I shook my head. “Tsk tsk. Now, why’d you have to go and lie to me? Last chance, Santa man.” I pressed the key down hard. “Who’d you call? And please, be honest this time.”

“We’re done talking.’ Now get out of here before I bring you a world of hurt.”

Yeah, like I was going to let a challenge like that pass me up. I dragged the key along the soundboard and left a long, white gash across the body. “Oh, how sad. Almost like watching puppies drown, isn’t it.”

Santa came at me, his bowl full of jelly leading the way. He grabbed the guitar and pulled it away from me, but before he could throw a string of obscenities at me, I brought the key up into his armpit. I felt the soft flesh give way. When he flinched back, he dropped the guitar. I caught it by the neck, reared back and kneecapped him with it. He collapsed in a not-so-jolly heap behind the counter.

The guy in the back had moved on to something I could only assume was supposed to be Stevie Ray Vaughn but it sounded more akin to cats dying in clothes dryer.

“Kind of makes you wish you’d just answered my question in the first place, huh?” The clerk just mumbled something while he clutched his shin with one hand and his armpit with the other.

I flipped the guitar around and struck a chord. “Damn, that’s impressive. Thing’s still in tune. You could run an ad campaign on that.”

“You son of a bitch.”

“Ah ah. I believe “witch” would be more accurate, but I didn’t come here to discuss family history. However, I would like to discuss your phone call.”

“Fuck you.”

I set the bottom of the guitar next to his head and wrapped my hands around its neck. “Think it’ll still be in tune after I five-iron your face with it? Now that would be one hell of an endorsement. Let’s find out.”

“Okay, okay, Christ.” Blood was leaking out from under his arm and onto the already stained and rarely vacuumed carpet. “Eli Carson.”

“Why?”

“He said some guy with a beat up face might show up here looking for his buddy and if he did I was supposed to call him.”

Was that guy in the back starting to sing now? Apparently killing the cats wasn’t enough. He had to rape them first. “Where is Pete, anyway?”

“I told you, Nashville. He quit a couple years ago to find studio work down there.”

I leaned the guitar against the wall and squatted down next to bloody ole St. Nick. “Good for him. What else did Carson tell you to do?”

“That was it man, just call him if you showed up.” I grabbed him under his arm and dug my fingers into his wound. He pulled back so quickly that he slammed his elbow against the wall. Fortunately the hack in the back was playing too loudly for him to hear the guy’s screams.

“I don’t know if you can tell, but I’m in a pretty shitty mood. And I don’t feel like playing Torquemada for the next hour or so and I’m pretty sure you don’t want me to either. So what do you say you just tell me everything he told you so I can stop before I have you confessing your mother is a heretic.”

He had his head on the ground, his face twisted in an awkward grimace. “I swear that’s all. He just told me to look out for you. That’s it. He wasn’t even here five minutes, I swear. He described what you looked like, gave me his number and a hundred bucks. Asked if he could post a flyer on the board and then left. I swear, that’s all.”

“Flyer? What flyer?” He pointed to a corkboard at the front of the store.

I walked over to the board and had a look. It was covered with dozens of photocopied ads for musicians and promos for local shows. All of them were pretty low budge, and even the ones that were made by people who had a basic understanding of Photoshop didn’t look like they knew anything about design. All except one.

A brown and green print was advertising a show later that night at The Verve. There were several bands on the bill, but the one on the list that caught my eye was Darby’s band. I ripped the ad down and stuffed it in my pocket.

I walked back over to Santa who was now sitting with his back against the wall and trying not to pass out. “Tell the boys when they get here that I’ll be in the back.”

“I guess Michael wasn’t the only crazy one,” he said.

I stopped. “What was that?”

“Yeah, I know who you are. You’re one of those Asher boys, aren’t you? I hope they tear you a new one.”

I stepped behind the counter and snapped the heel of my boot to the side of his head. There was a flinch, a grunt, and then only pained mumbling. He crawled about halfway into the office before he passed out.

I went to the back room and found the hatchet man who was killing a Fender Tele with his pudgy hands. He looked up at me, gave me his best rock star grimace, and tried to impress me with some sloppy sixteenth notes. I tapped him on the shoulder.

“Hey man, just wanted to tell you that you’re fucking amazing.” He nodded like his greatness was common knowledge. “Anyway, the guy up front thought so too, so he called some A&R guys here in town to come check you out. Man, they are going to love you.”

The wanker gave me another nod then stared down his nose at me as he started on some Hendrix. Or maybe it was Ashlee Simpson. I couldn’t tell. If Carson’s heavies showed up and heard this joker playing, they’d most likely break his arms so badly that he’d never be able to pick up a guitar again.

I leaned over, gave his amp a little volume boost, and then left the store.

Chapter 11: Aunt Sarah

2005-11-17T20:16:00.000-08:00

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I took a sip of beer and stared at the imaginary line. All I had to do was hop in my Jeep and drive fifty feet and I’d be back in Indiana. I took another drink.

The gravel parking lot was empty save for me and a rusty tractor that most likely had been parked there since the Carter administration. The State Line Inn—which really wasn’t an inn at all—was a square building with red wood siding that seemed smaller than what I remembered.

Even though the noon sun was directly overhead, it was at least twenty degrees cooler than it had been in the desert. But the air was humid and thick. Every inhale was like breathing warm bath water. My t-shirt was soaked with sweat and my stitches were starting to itch.

I caught sight of a deer dashing along the edge of the wildlife preserve just north of the Inn. Black birds and dark clouds of insects swarmed among the dying ash trees of the swampy fields to the south. The place was wild, untouched. Other than the Inn, there was nothing that even suggested civilization. Hell, I couldn’t even get a signal on my cell phone.

I looked back to the road. It was easy to tell where the actual state line was. Aside from the fences and the tree lines, the road that ran into Indiana was well kept on the Illinois side, but once it crossed over it became cracked and riddled with potholes and the dotted yellow line became dim and faded. A tin blue sign of the Hoosier seal perched in the ditch on the far side of the road trumpeted a flagrant lie: ‘Indiana Welcomes You.’

I finished my beer and got in the Jeep. Cerberus was watching the deer in the distance. The dogs eyes were wide, his brows turned down over his nose. The last time I saw him with that look on his face was just before he tore into Benoit.

“Easy now, dog. I don’t want to have to put that chain on you.”

He just ignored me and kept staring. I could feel his low grumble through the car seat. I gave him a tussle behind his ears then pulled out of the gravel lot and onto the road.

When I crossed over I couldn’t lose the image of Charon himself guiding me over the river Styx. “Well, at least I have you to protect me, don’t I dog?” Cerberus’ large eyes rolled in my direction then he stuck his head out of the window and let the wind blow his hair back.

As I drove farther away from the state line, the fields gradually turned into farmland. Corn tassels waved in the breeze while the cattails and milkweeds that infected the roadsides wilted in the wet heat. Oak trees that were heavy with thick and green leaves hovered over the road.

Houses started coming into view as the land became more domesticated. Ranch homes, farm houses, the occasional dilapidated barn. There were animal pastures browning under the summer sun while cows and sheep clustered underneath what shade they could find.

Cerberus’ head was up and his nose was twitching through the rush of air as he held his head outside the window. I sniffed and smelled a nearby buffalo farm. Christ, that was frightening. Even after living nearly a decade in LA I could still tell the difference between a horse farm, a cattle farm, and a buffalo farm just by the stench of shit in the air. Damn I wish I could put that on a résumé.

After most of the cornfields and cow pastures bled into country yards and subdivisions, I came to a large grass field just off the road about a mile before it intersected with Highway 41. The field was a ten acre rectangle of flat, freshly mowed grass that was flanked on all sides by grotesquely affluent homes. A nearby hanger housed the crop dusters and Cessnas that used the field as a landing strip. Several of the houses themselves had small planes docked in the little carports just off the garages.

I pulled onto the road that ran parallel to the landing strip and drove the half mile to the end, then followed it around to the other side of the strip until I came to a three story home that would have rivaled Rick’s house in the hills. It was a castle made of cobblestone and glass. And when I parked my dusty Jeep in the driveway, I could feel the value of the house depreciate.

I got out and stretched. It felt good to stand. Other than the pitstop at the Inn, I had been on the road all day. And I could tell by how quickly Cerberus jumped out that he was in desperate need of a break too.

A bi-plane was on the runway and taxiing for take-off in our direction. Cerberus was marking a nearby bush when he caught sight of the plane a few hundred yards away. The muscles in his shoulders tensed, his claws dug into the turf, and then he was gone. And I mean gone.

Cerberus tore ass across the grass field toward the airplane. I called out to him but the damn thing kept running, his legs churning like the wheel brackets on an overheated locomotive. I had no idea who his previous owners were, but I got the distinct impression that they didn’t let him run around that much. And when a dog is looking at several acres of empty space with a giant red toy coming at him, a whistle and a “here boy” ain’t gonna cut it.

Cerberus was closing in fast as the plane lifted off the ground. It was about fifteen feet up when the dog reached it. As the plane passed over his head, he jumped and snapped at the plane’s wheel axle. He missed by a few feet, did an awfully inelegant tumble in the air, and landed in full stride after the plane again.

“What is wrong with that fucking dog?”

“That’s what I’d like to know.”

I turned and saw Sarah with her hands on her hips and a crooked smile on her face. She was half my height, twice my age, and prettier than most people ever hoped to be.

“Daniel, what happened to you?”

“What, the stitches? Oh they’re all the rage in LA. Pretty soon all the fashionistas’ll be wearing them.”

She dismissed my snarkiness with a wave and hugged me. She smelled like apricots. “Daniel, what on earth are you doing here? I thought you weren’t allowed here any more.” She put her arm through mine and led me to her front door.

“I’m not. And I don’t plan on being here any longer than I have to be.” She led me inside and closed the door behind me. “And call me Dingo.”

“I will do no such thing,” she said. “I will not allow you to wear that albatross around your neck while you’re in my house.”

“Yes ma’am.”

It was cool inside and the iron bar of heat that had been weighting me down for the last two thousand miles finally lifted.

The house itself was open with a single support beam running through the main line of the structure. The second and third floors stopped just before the large open area where the sun beamed through two large windows, illuminating the leather furniture below in a warm, orange glow. It reminded me of the large cathedrals my parents dragged me to when I was a kid.

Sarah pulled a beer from the fridge, handed it to me, and gestured me to sit on the sofa. “So, what brings you into the lion’s den?”

“Straight to business, huh?”

“We can start with the small talk if you want. I hear you have a girlfriend.”

“Well, I had one when I left. Not so sure I have one now.” I hadn’t talked to Julie since she took her ferret and ran for the hills. I tried calling her several times but she never answered.

“Her loss. How’s Rick?”

“Famous as ever.” I took a long drink from the bottle. The thin coating of dust inside my throat gently washed away.

Sarah looked at me out of the corner of her eye for a moment as she twirled a lock of hair between her fingers. “Would you like a little more chit-chat, or are you ready to tell me what you’re doing here?”

“You know, Sarah. I’m getting the impression you aren’t too happy to see me.”

“Daniel, please. You know that’s not true and stop changing the subject.”

I finished the bottle and set it on the coffee table. “Darby stole the box.”

“The one I worked for your mother?”

“Uh huh.”

Sarah got up and pulled a bottle of orange juice from the fridge. “How’d she find it?”

I gave her the abridged version: idiot brother, mic stand, idiot customer, open box, thug, twelve stitches, trip to Indiana. She just nodded and drank her juice.

“She’s in Terre Haute now, but I don’t know for how long.”

“Why not just let it go?”

This time I went to the fridge to grab another drink. “You know I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“One, because I promised I’d keep it safe and B, nobody gets away with stealing my shit.”

“Your shit?”

“You know what I mean.”

Sarah threw her hair back over her shoulder. “I’ve been your mother’s best friend for forty years, Daniel. I think she’d—”

“You’d be wrong.”

Sarah watched me for a moment then stood up and walked to the large bay window that looked out to the landing strip. There were no planes to be seen, but Cerberus was still running the length of the field as if hellfire was burning his tail. “That’s a strange dog you have. What’d you say his name was?”

“Cerberus.” I swallowed half the bottle of beer.

“Where’d you get him?” she asked.

“Picked him up on the way to Vegas. Found him abandoned at some rundown gas station.”

She watched the dog run and jump and chase things that weren’t there. “You don’t usually pick up stray animals, do you. What made you take this one?”

“I don’t know. He just seemed…I don’t know. He was abandoned, left to burn in the heat. Besides, he reminded me of a three legged mutt I used to know.”

“Kind of an odd coincidence that you come across this dog just as you’re about to lose the box, don’t you think?”

“It’s just a dog, Sarah.”

Sarah laughed and walked back to the couch. “A dog the size of my hatchback that tries to pull airplanes out of the sky is not just a dog, Daniel.”

I looked out the window. Cerberus was a dark streak across the green. He just wouldn’t stop running. “Whatever he is, he saved my life.”

“Well, just be careful. Because it looks like you’re getting in the thick of it, honey.”

I snorted. “I’m just trying to get the box back, Sarah. I’ve got nothing to do with any of that nonsense.”

“If you say so.” Sarah set her juice on the table and walked over to a bookshelf. She grabbed something from the top shelf and then handed it to me. It was a picture of her and my mom at Rick’s first release party. Sarah’s eyes were half opened, an empty champagne glass in her hand. My mother’s face was twisted into a smile, the dark pendant around her neck like a black hole pulling her features into a warped and unnatural grimace. “I wanted to give you this when it was taken, but you were already gone by then.”

I handed it back to her. “I really don’t need it.”

“Don’t you?”

I knew this was going to happen. I loved Sarah to death. Though she wasn’t a blood relative, she was still as much a part of the family as anyone. Hell, she was more a mother to me than my own mother, but I simply wasn’t in the mood to talk about the bitch that birthed me.

Sarah sat next to me and pointed at my mom. “Do you know what’s so special about this picture?” I shrugged. “It’s the first time your mother ever smiled after Michael.”

Rick’s release party had been almost two years after the whole mess with Michael. Although I could never honestly remember my mother ever smiling, especially at me, I couldn’t imagine not smiling for nearly two years. Even I smiled more often than that. “What’s your point, Sarah?”

“No point. Just wanted you to see it. But you should keep it. You need to remember that your mother—”

“She’s dead, Sarah.”

“Now, Daniel.”

I stood up and went to the fridge for another beer. “Look, I don’t want to talk about it, okay?”

Sarah leaned back into the couch, spreading her arms along the top. “Okay, if you don’t want to talk about that, let’s talk about something else instead. Like why you’re here. You show up on my doorstep with your handsome face falling apart and a dog that chases airplanes. I know you missed me, Daniel. But seriously, why come here?”

I tossed the bottle cap into the sink and watched it clank around. “Because, Sarah. You’re the only one I know who can do it.”

“Do what, Daniel?” She sat forward on the couch, her hands resting comfortably on her knees.

“I want you to destroy it.”

Her brow bent over her eyes and her mouth was pursed into a sideways smile. “What would that accomplish?”

I sat down and started pulling the paper from my bottle of beer. “I don’t know. Maybe end all of this. End my obligation to keep hiding the damn thing.”

Sarah clasped her hands and stared at me in a way that made me feel like I was about to be sent to the principal’s office. I couldn’t help but squirm in my seat. “Look, Daniel. You can destroy the box. You don’t even need me for that. It’s just wood, nothing special about it. It’s what’s inside that’s the problem.”

“I know. That’s why I need you.”

“I can’t do it, Daniel. And even if I could, would you really want me to?”

When I spoke, she shrank back into the couch. “Twenty-seven people, Sarah. Some of them kids. You bet your sweet ass I’d want you to.”

Sarah stared at me with her soft blue eyes and then nodded. She stood up, smoothed her sun-dress, and said, “Well, unfortunately, it can’t be done. I’m sorry Daniel.”

I figured as much, but it didn’t hurt to ask. I just wanted to be rid of the damn thing. The idea of letting it go appealed to me, but there was no way I could let Darby keep it. I had promised to keep it hidden. Besides, there was no way in hell I was going to take a chance on that monster running loose in the world.

Not again.

Chapter 10: This Is Your Life

2005-11-10T18:56:00.000-08:00

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My face looked like a Frankenstein creation underneath the jaundiced light of the motel bathroom. My left eye was purple, swollen, and the stitches just above it stood out like the wiry hairs of an insect. What little white I could see of my left eye was blood-shot with bright red veins spidering into my cornea. My other scars were just as pronounced in the light, but they were only thin, pale marks in comparison.

The hum of the fluorescent lights was adding to my migraine and looking at my patchwork face wasn’t helping. It was strange how the marks on my face laid out a timeline of misfortunes, like the stilted and scarred rings of a tree. Most people had photo albums. I had scar tissue.

The tiny scar on my chin was from when I was nine.

A friend of mine lived on a farm with his grandparents just outside of the town proper. They didn’t have any crops or cows, or sheep, or even chickens for that matter. All they had were just a couple of cats and about two dozen horses, and not the fancy, lithe equestrian elites that you see prancing around during the summer Olympics. No, these were draft horses. And they were the size of school buses.

During the summer we’d run around and play in the twelve acre pasture out behind the barn where all those behemoths would spend their days stampeding over one another. One particularly hot day, we got a bunch of our friends together, loaded up our BB guns, headed out to the pasture and decided to have ourselves a little war.

Since the pasture was mostly a flat field of dirt and grass, we stayed near the center where there were three willow trees, each about twenty yards apart. The trees were always a favorite place for the horses to find shade, and on that particular day, they were all there trying to keep cool.

The boy who was officiating the event explained the rules thusly: “You can only pump the gun once. And no crotch shots.” That was it. Shooting in the face was okay, but the nads were off limits. Heaven forbid a 9 year old should get pelted in the balls before they had a chance to drop.

We weren’t very bright children.

The war went as smoothly as nine year olds could make it. We all ran from tree to tree, lazy horse to lazy horse in search of cover as the stinging bites of tiny copper balls nipped at us. They hurt, but we all gave as good as we got. That was, until I caught one in the face. The BB actually broke the skin on my chin and ran underneath along my jaw-line, getting stuck about two inches from where it entered. The upshot being that the pain dropped me to the ground just as the horse I was hiding behind tried to kick me. Lucky shot in more ways than one. It saved my life.

I got the hooked scar across my nose the day I saw my first dead body. It had been the summer of my sixteenth birthday and I had been detasseling corn with every other teenager in the state. We had been marching through the cornfields with small spade shovels cutting down ‘rogue’ plants when I had tripped and fallen over something, smacking myself in the face with the spade. When my crew had come over to help, we all had noticed what it was I had tripped over. A smooth, white rock had been protruding out of the ground.

Someone had gone over and had tried to pry it out with a spade, but when he had kicked it up, we had seen that it was actually a skull. It had turned out that I had inadvertently uncovered the shallow grave of the Spilotro brothers. It had been such a monumental discovery that I had my picture in the local newspaper, grinning from ear to ear and standing over the empty hole in the ground, my face covered in blood and dust.

At 28, I got the scar over my right eye. Darby had walked up to me as I was standing in the kitchen pouring myself a cup of coffee. She hadn’t said anything. No curses, no shouting, no sweet or angry good-byes. Just pointed a pistol at my head and fired.

Again, I was lucky. I must have looked up in just enough time to react because the bullet had ricocheted off of my skull instead of repainting the kitchen with my gray matter.

People all say different things about what it feels like when they’re shot. It burns, it’s cold, it feels like needles. I, however, didn’t feel a thing. I just remember the ringing in my ears, the smell of gunpowder, and that everything had gone blue like I was looking through colored lenses. I don’t remember how long Darby stood over my prone form, but I do remember that I had stayed on the kitchen floor for a few minutes after she had left.

By the time she had come back from the corner deli, I had made it to the chair in the living room with a dishtowel full of ice. She had calmly sat on the couch across from me and munched on her spinach and cheddar bagel as I bled. After she had shoved the last of it in her mouth, she asked me for a divorce. But not until she had finished her breakfast.

To this day I don’t know why I hadn’t immediately said yes. For some reason I had to think about it, as if the marriage was still salvageable. I guess no matter how bad things get, how irreparable, how far gone, you just never want to give up hope. You still believe you can fix things.

But a bullet to the head has a tendency to sour the outlook of a relationship. After that, there really was nothing left to fix. Of course, it had taken me longer to come to that realization than it had taken Darby to eat that fucking bagel.

I wasn’t a very bright adult.

I swallowed a few pills with some tap water. But I knew they wouldn’t get rid of the pain, just dull it for a few hours. Long enough that I’d be able to get some sleep. I had been on the road most of the day and still had another day of travel before I hit Indiana.

Cerberus was on the bed farthest from the air conditioner, burrowed deep under the covers. I laid down on the other bed and tried to relax, but I couldn’t get my mind to shut off. There was too much noise in my head, too many random thoughts, too many dark memories. I concentrated on the pain in my head but it didn’t help. I just wanted to sleep.

I opened my eyes and studied the odd formations of water damage on the ceiling. Whoever tried to cover it up with paint did a pretty piss-poor job. The amorphous stain bled through the single coat making it seem as if I was looking up through muslin from the bottom of a muddy pond. And if I concentrated hard enough, I could almost see the ripples on the surface.

That got me to thinking about Luna and her animal spirit guide. I knew more than enough about the world to know what was real and what was just flaky, New Age horseshit, but the exercise was pretty calming. I’d never give Luna the satisfaction of knowing that, though. One whiff of my acceptance and she’d have me naked in the desert howling at the full moon.

I closed my eyes and tried to picture that nice little wooded area. I really didn’t care if my guide ever showed up or not. Hell, I already had one animal in my life and that was trouble enough. Besides, just the nature of an animal spirit guide bothered me. Not that it was an animal, or even a spirit. What concerned me was the fact that it was a guide. I didn’t really want to think about where such a thing might want to guide me.

In my mind’s eye, I saw the trees under a night sky. I saw stars through their leaves as they towered above, bending over me like angry parents.

The pain in my head was subsiding as the medicine kicked in. I got that fuzzy feeling like my head was filled with cotton and my hands were filled with lead. When I breathed, the air tasted of mildew and old ashtrays. I tried to ignore the smell and focus on the trees.

It didn’t take long to get to that place where I felt like someone was watching me. I could feel something out there, hiding in the shadows of the trees. The problem was that I never knew if this was a genuine spiritual feeling or just me forcing myself to have an experience.

I’ve heard people talk about this sort of thing before and their animals are always exotic or powerful, and always beautiful. Siberian white tigers, fluorescent cockatiels, lions, grizzly bears. They’re always these grand, majestic beasts or some cleverly tiny familiars. But how much of this shit did these people make up? I mean, if the animal chooses you and not the other way around, why are all the animals so damn wonderful? You’d think that every once in a while an armadillo, or a rat, or even a three-legged beaver might want to play ethereal tour guide for an afternoon. Who knows, I might give all this crap a little more credence if I heard someone bragging about their mighty spirit chicken.

But I wasn’t going to hold my breath.

Regardless of whether or not I was just fooling myself, it didn’t feel like a chicken hanging out in my head. But as I tried to concentrate on what was moving in the shadows, my head grew thicker. Everything faded to gray as I started to fall into a drug-assisted coma. I wanted to get up and shut off the light, but my body was too heavy. My mind was finally quiet with the sad exception of my wondering what a beaver would look like with a wooden leg. It was the last thought I had before I fell asleep.

I dreamed of family.

Chapter 9: A Man Named Terry Hut

2005-11-03T18:15:00.000-08:00

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The neighborhood was quiet and unmoving as if the heat had sterilized and killed every living thing on the surface of the planet. I parked the Jeep underneath the only tree that provided a semblance of shade on the street. Even though it was at least 115 degrees, I put the top up to keep Cerberus inside the vehicle. The girl at the pound was right; he was dangerous. If anything smaller than a fullback walked by, he’d have no problem snatching them off the sidewalk and using them as a chew toy.

The windows were cracked a couple of inches but it still felt like an oven inside. Cerberus just stared at me as I peeled myself off of the seat, his mouth open just enough for me to glimpse the arsenal of teeth inside.

If he wasn’t occupied, he’d probably just chew his way out, so I tossed him an oversized Mag-lite and said, “Stay.” He went to it like a bone.

Even though I was in the hospital for less than twenty-four hours—much to the annoyance of that doctor who insisted that I needed a drilling expedition inside my brainpan—Benoit already had time to wrap his house in a plastic tarp. Wide arcing trenches from my tires scarred his front yard and bits of house littered the empty driveway.

I scanned the area but didn’t see anyone. It made sense. Anyone crazy enough to be outside in this heat probably had bigger problems than worrying about some guy sneaking around their neighbor’s house. As I pulled the tarp back to slide inside I became acutely aware of how unarmed I was. Benoit and his posse no doubt had a host of guns at their disposal. And it didn’t help that I was never one for guns since every time I was in the presence of a one I always ended up getting shot. .22s, 12-guages, Berettas, Glocks, hell even piss-ant BB guns (a childhood game resulted in me spending the better part of an afternoon prying a damn copper ball out of my chin).

Inside, the living room looked the same as it did the night I got my Martha Stewart on. Black tire marks painted the floor underneath a carpet of broken wood and glass. Tiny shards littered the blood-stained couch. The chair I had sat in that night was a blackened husk and a dark smear pooled across the ceiling directly above it.

I saw Benoit’s answering machine lying on the ground next to the remains of an antique end table, but any hope of getting information from it disappeared as soon as I picked it up and its innards spilled to the floor. Then I heard it.

Something was…chirping? No, that wasn’t it. A soft sound was coming from down the hallway, the only visible part of the house unaffected by my remodeling. At that moment, having a gun didn’t sound like such a bad idea. But, me being me, I was going to have to do with what was available. There was a hunk of a table leg sticking out from the bottom of the couch. I grabbed it, pulled it out, and started to move slowly and deliberately toward the hallway, but the flotsam underneath my feet crunched and crackled.

Every step I took was a Fourth of July fireworks display and I couldn’t help but cringe as I made my way across the room. I was thankful that the chirping at the end of the hall started and stopped, oblivious to the racket I was making. Fortunately the hallway itself was free of debris.

The noise was a little louder as I came to an open door at the end of the hallway. When I peeked inside, I did a double take. There, on a perfectly made king-sized bed, was a baby. The boy, if its blue jumper was a proper indication, was cooing and gurgling at some imaginary thing hovering above his head.

There was no one else in the room.

An open suitcase overflowing with jeans and t-shirts was lying next to the bed. I pulled back, shot a glance down the hallway behind me but saw no one. Back inside the room the baby squealed a sound akin to a laugh and drooled over its cherubic face.

It took a few seconds for me to process the idea of Benoit having a baby. The only explanation I could think of was that one of the locals must have offered it to him as a sacrifice. Even though there were few things in the world I wanted to do more at that moment than feel Benoit’s windpipe crack in my hands, there was no way I was going to start anything with a kid in the room. Maybe Benoit wouldn’t be too eager to have a throwdown either. But something told me that if he really wanted to start shit here and now, I was going to be the only one impeded by the baby’s safety.

A shadow moved in an adjacent room off the far side of the bedroom. Most likely a bathroom. There was a clank of plastic and a groan of stiff hinges from a medicine chest closing. If I could get into the bathroom, I could pummel that son-of-a-bitch and not have to worry about the kid getting hurt. Guess it was someone’s unlucky day.

I stepped inside and moved around to the side of the bed. The baby giggled and kicked its feet in the air, his round face split with a wide, toothless grin.

“What’s so funny, babydoll?” A woman stepped out of the bathroom with a handful of toiletries. She was short with dark hair, a little wide in the hips, and had a round, pretty face. When she saw me, she froze.

Now, I don’t have kids. I’ll probably never have kids. But despite the fact that I’d never spawned myself, I was fully aware of the preternatural instinct that came to the surface whenever a person’s child was threatened. And when a wiry stranger holding a broken table leg with a look of terminal anger on his swollen and stitched face was standing over your infant child, the concept of self-preservation ceased to exist. Nothing else mattered but the safety of that child. And I could tell by the look in this woman’s eyes that the only thing on her mind other than protecting that little bundle of joy mewling on the bed was how she was going to dispose of my body.

I took two slow half-steps back from the bed and away from the baby. I lowered the hunk of solid oak I was holding to my side and held the other hand out to show her it was empty. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“You’re the one, aren’t you?” She moved forward, putting herself between me and the baby. “You did this to my house. My home.” She dropped the bottles of shampoo and bars of soap at her feet then brandished the toothbrush like a shiv. “My baby’s home.” When she said it, she growled in a way that would have given Cerberus a run for his money.

I learned long ago that it doesn’t matter how bad you are, how tough, how hard. You never…never fuck with a mom. They will eat your lungs and wash them down with a pint of your spinal fluid if they think you’re a threat to their little tikes. There are no limits to what they’ll do to protect their babies. Hell, this whole goddamn mess was proof of that. And right now there was no doubt in my mind that this little woman wanted nothing more than to give me an Oral-B lobotomy.

What was it about me that made people want to shove things inside my head?

The only thing missing was an old clock-tower moving ominously toward noon and a set of spurs on my feet.

“Get out.” She held the toothbrush in a white-knuckled fist and took a step forward, still keeping herself between me and the baby.

…chink…

“I’d like to. But I’m looking for the person who…who I thought lived here.” If this woman ended up goring me with that damn thing, I was going to rise from the dead and haunt my brother until he went insane and took his own life. All this because he needed a mic stand. What the fuck.

“He isn’t here. Now get out.”

I slowly set the table leg on the ground. “I just want to find him.”

The baby was getting a sense of the tension in the room and started to cry, kicking its chubby legs in agitation. Mom gave a glance to the kid then turned back with a flourish of her toothbrush. “Get out of my house!”

Now I was starting to get agitated. “Look here, lady. I—”

She screamed and charged me. Normally, I’d just side-step her with a swift kick to the knee, throw a little hand-grab and take the toothbrush away. But this wasn’t seven feet of ‘roid riddled henchmen. This was five feet of pissed off mom. And being that I was a big fan of my lungs and spinal fluid, I did the only thing I could think to do in that situation. I turned and ran like a little girl.

When I rounded the corner out of the bedroom and into the hallway, my feet slipped out from under me. My hips hit the ground hard and a spike of pain shot up my spine and into the hole in the side of my head.

The violent patter of momma’s footsteps stopped behind me. I looked up just in time to see her coming down on me with the toothbrush in perfect Norman Bates fashion. I rolled out of the way and into the destroyed living room across the glass and splinters, found my footing and jumped over the couch as she took another swipe at me.

The bloody couch was between us, but I didn’t think it would stop her. “Dammit, woman will you hold on a second! I don’t want to hurt you!”

“Well I want to hurt you. Look what you did to my house!”

She had me there. I suppose I could have claimed that it was an accident, that I was drunk and lost control of the car, but that wouldn’t explain the smackdown with the crowbar. “Yes, I did this to your house and I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you and a baby lived here. But Julius stole something of mine. Something very valuable.”

The baby was screaming in the other room. The mom stood stiff on the other side of the couch, the shattered remains of the toothbrush sticking out of her tiny fist. She kept glancing back and forth between me and the crying from the other room. She let out a deep sigh then relaxed. “Well, isn’t that just like him.” She threw the broken toothbrush to the ground and crunched her way back to the bedroom.

I followed her at a safe distance, but she completely ignored me. When I stuck my head around the doorframe, I saw her holding the baby, shushing and singing to it. I wanted to ask her questions but I didn’t think it was safe enough to actually step inside the room. If I was going to poke the bear, it was probably best if I did it through the bars of its cage with a very long pole. “Um, I know you’re busy, but if you could just tell me where I can find Julius, I’ll go ahead and get out of your way.”

Mom set the now quiet baby on the bed again. She grabbed the suitcase, tossed it on the bed next to the baby, and started shoving even more things inside. “What did my husband steal this time? Money? Drugs?” She snorted a laugh through her nose. “Your girlfriend?” She looked up at me as she twisted a t-shirt into a ball.

“A box.”

She folded a yellow onesie and put it on top of the t-shirt. “Just a box, huh. Well, what’d you have in it? Money, drugs? Your girlfriend?” She chuckled to herself.

“Brother, actually.”

Her hands stopped moving. “How’s that?”

“Where’s Julius now?”

The mom pushed the clothes down into the suitcase and tried to zip it closed. “Don’t know, don’t care. Bastard left me to take care of this mess.” She grunted as she closed the zipper the last few inches then set the suitcase on the floor next to the bed. “Fuck him. I’m tired of cleaning up after him.” She turned to the baby. “You didn’t hear mommy say that bad word.” The kid giggled and grabbed his feet in his pudgy hands.

“When’s he coming back?”

The mom picked up the baby and rested it on her hip before bending to grab the suitcase. “Look mister, I’m sorry that my husband took your box. I really am. But you’ve ruined his house, so why don’t you call it even?”

“I can’t do that.”

She shrugged her shoulders and moved toward me with the suitcase in tow. “Wait for him then. I don’t care.”

“Will he back soon?”

She moved past me and dragged the suitcase down the hallway behind her. “Sure, as soon as he’s finished with his latest bimbo. But I’ll be damned if I’ll take him back again. I’m done with this shit.” She stopped and turned to me. “I suppose I should thank you since you were the straw that finally broke the camel’s back.”

I tested the bandage on my forehead. My sweat was causing it to slide off. “Glad I could help. So, he’s off with a new girl?”

“He doesn’t even bother to hide them anymore. At least before he tried to be discreet. But now I guess he just doesn’t care. He brought this one to the house, my house, grabbed some of his clothes and just left. Well two can play that game.”

I ran up and helped her with the suitcase. She scowled at me instead of thanking me, but at least she didn’t bare her fangs and vamp my throat. “What did this new girl look like?”

“Like a whore.” I didn’t know it was possible for someone so short to actually look down at me. She shifted the baby to her other hip. “I thought you said he didn’t steal your girlfriend.”

“Ex-wife, maybe. And he can have her for all I care. But was she about my height, tiny, long dark hair? Really pretty?”

The mom started moving toward the front door which now hung at an odd angle in the wall. “Yes. Pretty. I pop out one kid and I become some sort of freak.”

“That’s not what I…look, did they say where they were going?”

I held the plastic tarp aside for her but she opened the front door and walked through. “I don’t keep tabs on him and his hussies.”

There was a cab melting on the street out in front of the house. The woman stopped and pulled a little pullover cap on the baby’s head to keep it from roasting in the sun.

When we got to the cab, I tossed the suitcase into the trunk. The baby was blowing little bubbles in its spittle as it played with a string on his mother’s blouse. “He didn’t say anything about where he was going or when he’d be back?”

“All he said was that he and his bimbo were going to see some Terry Hut guy and they’d be gone for a couple days. Which leaves me to call somebody to fix this mess.”

“Terry Hut? You mean Terre Haute?”

She pulled her gaze away from her ruined house and said, “Yeah. That was it. You know the guy?”

I started feeling queasy and my head was pounding. “It’s not a guy. It’s a place.”

“Yeah? Well if you find my rat bastard of a husband there, tell him that his wife and son left him. And he better not come looking for us.” She got in the cab and shouted an address to the cabbie.

I leaned in the open window. “I’ll make sure to tell him. Thanks. And hey, I really am sorry about your house.”

She twisted her mouth into a sneer, covered her baby’s eyes with one hand and flipped me off with the other.

“Fair enough.” I smacked the cab on the hood then watched it speed down the road.

Back at the Jeep, Cerberus was inside, turning the Mag-Lite into something resembling a melted Tootsie Roll. I pulled out my phone and started punching buttons.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Luna. It’s Dingo. Things just got bad.”

She made a burping sound then asked, “Oh, god, how bad?”

I started to wipe a stream of sweat from my forehead, but I stopped when my fingers felt the thin line of scar tissue over my right eye.

“Indiana bad.”

CHAPTER 8: Peas In A Pod

2005-10-27T20:40:00.000-07:00

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As Julie kept asking question after question, all I could think of was how desperately I needed a normal, healthy relationship. As far as most of my relationships went, mine with Julie was great. But it was great in all the wrong places. There really wasn’t much more to it than sex. Even though it was a mind-numbing, bathe-in-gasoline-to-slough-the-shame-from-my-soul kind of sex, it didn’t matter. At the end of the day we were just objects to each other. We couldn’t talk about anything else. We’d tried before, but it had usually led to an afternoon of power-fucking in every changing room on Rodeo Drive. It was a fun ride, but nothing more. And like every great ride, Julie was beautiful, fast, and could turn on a dime in the blink of an eye.

“I don’t understand, Dingo.” I couldn’t tell if it was the 12 stitches over my eye giving me the headache or Julie’s prattling. I bit off a stretch of red tape and put it over the empty socket where my taillight should have been while I balanced the phone between my shoulder and swollen cheek.

“Julie, I told you. Darby took the box.”

“I get that, but—.”

“The box my dad hand-carved just before he died.” I could feel the two edges of skin stitched together pull at each other every time my jaw moved.

“Yes, yes, and the box protects your family’s dirty little secret or your mother’s pride and joy or whatever the hell it is you’re calling it this week.”

“Hey, I told you not to go digging—. ”

“I don’t care what it is, Dingo! I couldn’t give a shit about that damn box or what’s inside. The only thing I want to know is what the fuck your ex-wife was doing there.”

So there it was. And I thought she was jealous just because somebody else got to beat the living crap out of me for a change. “Julie, I didn’t even know she was in town until after I was in the hospital.”

“Bullshit. Let me ask you, Dingo. Did your brother really leave that box in the trunk or was this just an excuse to see her again?”

“Oh, for the love of…” I checked under the rear tire well to make sure the tire wouldn’t scrape against the dented frame. Fortunately, the damage was mostly cosmetic. Still, I was going to have Benoit’s balls on a stick for this.

“Answer the question, Dingo. Was this just a trick?”

“She shot me in the face, Julie! Do you understand that? She pointed a pistol directly at my head and pulled the trigger. What, in all that is unholy on this planet, makes you think I would ever want to see that psychotic bitch again after that?”

“I thought you let her shoot you?”

“No!” Everything was part of some twisted sex game with Julie. The one time I had opened up to her about my ex-wife, she saw it as just another tawdry tale of my sex life.

“Then why are you going after her if you don’t want to see her?”

I fumbled through my pockets and found my prescription bottle. I knew that if I screamed, my head would break and my brain would leak through the gaping hole in the side of my head, granting me the sweet, sweet release of death.

I took in the deepest breath I could muster. “To go after THE FUCKING BOX!”

Oh. So that’s what an aneurism feels like.

“You’re an asshole. And I’m leaving.” I tried to speak but my brain was slowly imploding. “Oh, and Dingo. I’m taking the ferret with me.”

She might have said more, but I couldn’t hear her. I was too busy trying not to pass out from the immense pain ricocheting around inside my skull. By the time I pulled myself up from the concrete skillet that was the parking lot, she had hung up.

It was the first time a woman ever dumped me without making me bleed first. A rather sad milestone when I thought about it.

Normal and healthy. Might as well ask to win the lottery.

After a quick stop at a grocery store, I headed to the pound. Fortunately, my headache had dissolved into a mild migraine by the time I got there. But the second I walked in, it escalated to a constant hammering. The smell of urine and fear crept through the overbearing stench of a pine-scented antiseptic that was making my eyes water. A woman with a fake henna tattoo around her neck and no make-up sat behind a faded green counter. I couldn’t imagine how anyone could smile in a place like this.

“Hello! May I help you?” she asked. She gave my broken face a quick scan, but kept smiling.

“Yeah, my dog was brought here last night. Name’s Cerberus.”

“Oh, thank god!” Her smile disappeared.

“Something wrong?”

She just scowled at me. “Follow me. This way.”

I followed her to a back room where I could hear the deep rumble of an air-conditioning unit. Once inside, I saw cages stacked and arranged in neat rows. The room smelled like bleach.

In the cages there were cats, dogs, and a few of those god-awful ferrets. All of them were cowering in a corner, shivering or burying their heads underneath their paws. A few of the dogs were mewling weak and pathetic howls so hoarse that they obviously must have been at it all night. I thought it must be a natural reaction to being in this place and seeing the humans that kept them here, but as we walked past their cages, I noticed that they weren’t shying away from us. They were recoiling from a larger cage in the center of the room. Cerberus.

The dog was stuffed inside a wire cage that allowed him to stand up only if he kept his head down. A small bowl of food sat untouched at his feet. His fur stuck out away from his head in wild strands through the wire bars of the cage and his fangs were bared through a thick, leather and steel-buckled muzzle that stretched around his mouth. The noise that I thought was the air-conditioning unit was actually coming from the dog. His growl was shaking the whole room. And though the room was at least thirty degrees cooler than it was outside, it was by no means cold. Yet I could still see subtle traces of Cerberus’ breath.

The girl turned to me and said, “Your dog killed one of the other dogs last night.”

“Really? Oh, sorry. Look, he was in a car accident with me and he probably just attacked because—”

“He didn’t attack the dog. He just scared it to death. I mean look at them all!” I scanned the room. She was right. Every animal in there was as far from Cerberus as their cage would let them be. Blood dripped from one of the ferrets’ mouths as it tried to chew through the metal bars of its cage.

“I think you’re imagining things, Miss.” Even I didn’t believe it when I said it.

She crossed her arms and said, “Look mister, I don’t know what kind of dog that is, but it isn’t healthy.”

“Not healthy? What, he’s got worms or something?”

“No, that’s not what I mean. I mean he’s just…just…”

“Oh. Wrong?”

She turned to me and her face relaxed a little. “Yeah. Wrong. That’s what he is. Wrong. I think you should put him down.”

I stepped forward and let Cerberus sniff my hand through the bars. He pressed his nose against me and tried to lick my hand through the muzzle. “I should put him down because he scares you?”

“I know dogs, mister, and this one’s dangerous. You can see it in his eyes.”

I hit the latch and opened the door. Cerberus unfolded himself out of the cage and stretched, his giant claws scraping across the cool linoleum. “Oh, you’re right. He is dangerous. You’ll get no argument from me about that.” I unbuckled the muzzle.

“What are you doing? You can’t do that!” She started to back toward the hallway. “He has to be muz—”

I tossed it to her. “Don’t worry. You’re safe.”

“Mister, that dog is dangerous. He’s…wrong. You said it yourself.”

Cerberus licked my hand and pushed his massive head against me. I scratched him behind the ears. “There are a lot of wrong creatures in the world, Miss. But just because we’re wrong, doesn’t mean we’re bad.”

As the dog and I left the room, the animals all moved about their cages, putting as much distance between them and Cerberus as possible. When we got out to the lobby I turned to the girl and asked, “How much do I owe you?”

“Nothing. Please, just go.” She stood behind the counter, never once taking her eyes away from Cerberus.

“Come on, dog.” When we stepped out of the building, the heat hit us like a blackjack. I could feel the moisture in my mouth evaporate when I opened it. I was almost tempted to spend a few more minutes inside, enjoying the cooler air, but it would probably be more comfortable to just stay out in the searing sun.

Cerberus didn’t seem affected at all as he ran to the Jeep and hopped up onto the hood, vaulted over the windshield and into the passenger seat. I got in and grabbed a plastic grocery bag from the back. Inside was a bottle of water and a ten pound ham.

I set the ham down on a paper bag on the floor of the Jeep then tried to unwrap it, but Cerberus kept pushing me out of the way with his gargantuan head. “Fine, fine. Eat the plastic, I don’t care.”

I took a swig of water then headed out onto the road. I knew that Darby most likely wasn’t still in town, but if she was, she’d be with Benoit. Or at the very least, that bastard would know where she was. Either way, his house was still standing. And that was just simply unacceptable.

I grabbed my phone and pulled up Julie’s number. I didn’t want to call her and I certainly didn’t feel guilty enough to do so, but my finger still hovered over the “Send” button.

Deep down, I knew I should just let it go. Just let Julie and her ferret slouch off to Bethlehem and be done with it. Normal and healthy, that’s what I was looking for now. A normal and healthy relationship.

I looked down and saw that Cerberus had devoured nearly all of the ham. Including the hambone. There were tiny bits of plastic sticking out of his fur. “Yep. There’s no doubt about it, dog.” I pressed the button. “You and I are definitely wrong.”

Chapter 7: A Hallmark Moment

2005-10-20T18:51:00.000-07:00

The clouds looked made of spider silk. Thin, white, wisps tendrilled out from underneath the bulbous extrusions in their slow parade across the sky. And there were stars, shimmering by the thousands. The sun was bright, the sky the bluest I’d ever seen, but there were stars.

The trees in front of me leaned back and forth in the wind, their leaves singing an autumnal hymn that sent the clouds to dancing. The bushes and tall grass waved like the waters of a great green ocean, breaking against the clearing in which I sat. I caught a scent of jasmine. And something else.

I wasn’t alone.

There was movement in the grass. Something swam toward me through the reeds and out from under the shadowy canopy of the forest. There were glimpses of color, all unnatural and foreign in this paradise.

The wind picked up, blowing my hair into my eyes. I couldn’t see. I brushed it aside and tried to focus on the movement that crept toward me. Again, my hair fell into my eyes. But it was odd. My hair wasn’t long enough to get into my eyes. Still, there it was, annoying and obtrusive. I brushed it away again.

The thing was closer. More wind. More hair. I had to clear my vision, see what was coming, but as I moved to brush my hair away again, my hand froze, unable to move. I struggled against whatever invisible force held my hand fast, but it was no use. It wouldn’t move. I couldn’t see and the thing in the grass moved closer. I could feel it near, watching me, stalking me.

“Mr. Asher.”

It called to me. The beast in the rushes knew my name and called to me. I pulled at my invisible bonds but they would not break. I screamed, thrashing to get away from the thing that held me.

“Mr. Asher!”

The wind disappeared, taking with it the sound of rustling leaves and flowing reeds. Now I could hear only the high hum of fluorescent lights. And people breathing heavily.

“Mr. Asher, you have to settle down.”

I tried to sit up, but a hand pushed me back down. I couldn’t see. There was light but I couldn’t see. Something was over my face.

“Get this off me!” My voice came out thick and heavy.

“Mr. Asher, please. Only two more stitches left.”

Stitches? Then I remembered.

“Let me up. Let me UP!”

I could feel three sets of hands on me, all pushing me down. “Sedate him.”

“Wait, stop! Just wait.” I eased back onto the bed and relaxed. I couldn’t afford to be knocked out again. “No more. Just finish this so I can get the hell out of here.”

The nurses and orderlies kept their hands on me while the person pulling at the hole over my left eye finished his work. I couldn’t have been out that long if they were just now finishing stitching my head.

I did a quick assessment of the rest of my body, first my toes and then slowly worked my way up. As I tensed the areas where my captors held me, they squeezed and leaned into me, obviously afraid I’d try to get up again. But when the tension passed, they relaxed their grip. Everything seemed to be in working order. A little sore and stiff, but nothing felt broken or torn beyond what a day or two of bed rest couldn’t fix.

When the gauze over my face was lifted, I squinted at the sharp light overhead. “All done.”

I sat up and turned to the man who had been sewing my face together with all the grace of an epileptic working a jackhammer. He looked 12. “Good. Now where’s my dog?”

“Mr. Asher, we’re going to be taking you back to a room. So—”

I kicked my legs over the side of the bed and brushed him aside. The nurses all rushed to restrain me but the kid doctor waved them off. “No. If he wants to go so badly, let him.”

I sneered at him. “Smart kid.” The boy in man’s clothing just smiled at me. I stood up, took a step and felt the world turn upside down. It seemed as if all the blood in my head had drained away to pool at my feet. I looked at the kid and said, “You smart-ass son of a…” then collapsed to the ground.

My head started to pound as blood flowed upward. I took a deep breath, sat against the wall and said, “…ow.”

“Would you like us to take you to your room now?”

If I wasn’t a quart low of A Pos, I’d bounce this brat off the walls. “No, I think I’ll stay here and bleed a little more.” I turned to the nurse on my right. “I can see up your skirt, you know.” She blushed and moved to unfold a wheelchair. “How soon can I get out of here?”

“Dr. Epstein will be able to answer your questions.”

I didn’t have the energy to press the kid, so I let the nurses ease me into the wheelchair and take me to my room where Dr. Epstein met me shortly after.

“Mr. Asher, how do you feel?”

“Like I’ve been skull fucked with a Volkswagen. But I’ve been worse.” The local anesthetic was starting to wear off and I could feel the length of the wound in my head.

“Yes, I know.”

“What?” I looked up and noticed that Dr. Epstein had a file a half inch thick resting on his clipboard.

“Cedar Sinai faxed these over. Makes for some interesting reading.”

“Yeah, well it made for some interesting living.”

The doctor chuckled. “I imagine. How’s your vision?”

Great. It was time for the game show portion of my hospitalization. Every time I’ve had blunt head trauma, the docs all asked the same questions: How’s your vision? What’s your name? Who’s the President of the United States? Answering the questions right got me a prescription to some heavy-duty pain-killers. Not a bad parting gift for the most part. However, answering the questions wrong usually meant being awarded with a cocktail of Demerol and myriad anti-seizure medications to be followed by the grandest prize of them all: a diamond-tipped drill-bit to the side of the head.

Dr. Epstein asked his questions and I gave him my answers. I’ve been banged on the head enough times to know whether or not it was serious and this little boo boo may have hurt like hell, but it was all superficial. My brain was still intact.

Twelve stitches and a headache. Not too high a price to pay for getting rolled in a car.

When he was done, the doctor scribbled on his notepad and said, “I’ll have a nurse come get you and take you down for some routine tests. In the meantime, the police have some questions for you.”

Wonderful. The lightening round. I wondered what prize THIS was going to get me.

Two uniformed officers came into the room and stood on either side of my bed. One pulled out a tiny notepad while the other rested her hand on her hip. The one with the notepad started asking questions: Did you see the kind of car that hit you? Do you remember seeing anyone follow you? Were you drinking?

No. No. No. It became a mantra. After about the eighth question, I’d had enough. “Look. I was stopped when something hit me. I didn’t see who or what it was. Now can you tell me, do you know what happened to my dog?”

The female officer said, “It was sent to the pound. Miracle the thing wasn’t killed.”

There was a polite knock at the door. A young blonde in a candy striper outfit poked her head inside and said, “I’m sorry, I’m looking for Mr. Asher.”

One of the cops gave the little girl a smile and nodded in my direction. The candy striper walked over to me and handed me an envelope. She stood next to me, shuffling from foot to foot as the cops and I all watched her. “There’s a little speech,” she said, “but I can skip it.” We all smiled and she left the room.

One cop said, “Mr. Asher, we believe this might not have been an accident. Do you know anyone who might have been angry with you? Someone who might want to hurt you?”

“Grab a phone book.” I knew exactly who did it and the second I got out of that damn hospital I was going to pay Mr. Benoit another visit. “Officer, I have a lot of people angry with me. But none of them live in Vegas.” My head began to throb. “What happened to my Jeep?” I asked as I started opening the envelope.

“Impounded.”

“Where? I need to get…I need to get some clothes out of there.” It was believable since my t-shirt was practically crusted over with dried blood.

The female officer smiled and said, “Don’t worry. The hospital will take care of—”

“No!” A spike of pain shot through my temples. “Look, I don’t like having my belongings just lying around.”

“Your stuff will be fine, Mr. Asher.”

“No, it won’t,” I mumbled.

“Is there something you’re not telling us, sir?”

I wanted to blurt out ‘Yes, you stupid cow!’ but I knew that I would never get out of Vegas if I did. So I tried to breathe through my nose, out of my mouth, and rid myself of this growing headache. “No. It’s just that I had some valuables in the Jeep and I don’t want them stolen.”

“Like I said, your stuff is fine. Your wife came in and picked up your things about an hour ago.”

The skin on the back of my skull went numb. “What did you say?”

“Your wife. You are married to a…” she flipped through her notepad. “…Darby Asher, yes?”

The numbness spread until the only thing I could feel was a tiny pinprick of pain over my left eye. Both of the cops stared at me, stone faced and unblinking. Then I noticed the get well card in my hands.

On the front of the card was a black and white photo of a young boy handing a colored rose to a young girl. But on the inside of the card there was no type, no charming or goofy pictures, no saccharin message lamenting the wonders of my existence. There was nothing except four tiny words scrawled across the inside in black ink:

‘Get well soon, motherfucker.’

Chapter 6: Room With a View

2005-10-10T22:32:00.000-07:00

The nice thing about a city like Vegas was that when a man walked into a drug store covered in blood and reeking of sweaty dog, it was business as usual. I stepped up to the counter and threw down the bandages, handi-wipes, some sports drinks, and three pounds of beef jerky. Some girl with green hair and a pierced head was behind me chatting on her cell phone about flying out to Amsterdam to catch a P● show at the end of the month. It took all I had not to turn around and strangle the life out of the waifish little nit.

“—means Power. Fargo18 said it’s a reference to Damon’s first girlfriend, but he’s full of shit. Paula was his sister, not his girlfriend. Hey, did you know their guitar player is related to a serial killer? That’s so hot. I hear—”

I leaned in close toward the cashier. “Can you ring this shit up a little faster?”

As I walked out to the Jeep with my booty in hand, Cerberus sat in the passenger seat and casually watched me approach. In the few hours I’ve been with the dog, it never once threatened me. But its mindless stare made my skin crawl. And I was going to have to put the top up soon. This dog was far from predictable and the last thing I needed was him jumping out and running off with someone’s kid. I would probably have to put the chain back on him.

I threw the beef jerky at Cerberus’ feet then spent the next fifteen minutes doctoring myself. I was going to have a nasty scar over my left eye to match the one on my right temple.

After I put on a clean t-shirt I threw back the sports drink and waited a few minutes for the electrolytes to kick in. While I waited, I punched Mr. Benoit’s address into my GPS system. A little dot began to flash on the screen.

I looked over to see that Cerberus had eaten all three pounds of jerky, including the plastic packaging. “Have I mentioned that you are just wrong, dog?” He stared at me for a moment before giving a noncommittal lick of his chops. “Just remember, I’m your friend. And we don’t eat friends.”

Still, he just stared.

“And why do you smell like creosote?”

I parked a few hundred feet from Mr. Benoit’s house. It was a stylish ranch house in a cookie-cutter subdivision sitting at the end of the road. The black Mercedes that Benoit rode away on was parked in the driveway at an odd angle. Mounds of dirt and sod from some recent landscaping project were piled in front of the large bay window, but not high enough that I couldn’t see directly into the house.

Using a pair of binoculars that I fished out of the glove box, I watched Mr. Benoit as he talked on the phone, pacing through his living room and throwing his hands around like he was swatting at flies. The driver was sitting back on a couch, pale and barely clinging to consciousness. But there were three other men in the house with them. All big, all well dressed, and all standing around the coffee table on which sat my box.

“I hope you’re still hungry, dog.” I buckled up, started the Jeep, and hammered the pedal. There was no need to turn on my headlights. The street lamps gave me enough visibility to tell where I was going. Besides, I didn’t want the bastards to see me until I was sitting in their laps.

It took about two and-a-half seconds to cover the distance to the house. The Jeep hit the mounds of dirt and launched over the little cobblestone porch. When the grille hit the bay window, there was enough resistance to throw me against my seatbelt. Cerberus bounced and hit the dash, but didn’t seem terribly bothered by it. Just. Wrong.

Shit flew in every direction. Glass and splinters rained down on the marble tile, singing out like a thousand wind chimes. An ottoman went airborne across the house and slammed into the far wall. Lamps, tables, sofas, all erupted in a storm of broken house-bits.

I hit the brakes and skidded to a halt in the middle of the living room. I unbuckled my seat belt, reached back and grabbed the crowbar, then hopped out.

Mr. Benoit was sprawled on the ground, his mouth hanging open as he tried to form words. The driver was still on the couch, covered in shards of glass and a thousand new cuts. Cerberus must have messed him up pretty badly because the guy didn’t seem to be reacting to the Jeep that just crashed through the window.

The others were picking themselves up off the floor, all cut and bleeding from flying debris. One was only a few feet away when he started to reach into his jacket.

“What the fu—,” was as far as he got before I opened his face with the crowbar. The other two sprang forward. The first to reach me got a knee in his face. As he was falling away, I brought the crowbar up and fish-hooked the second guy, ripping his cheek open and sending small streaks of his blood across the cream colored walls. That just left Benoit.

Cerberus was already out of the car and on top of him. The dog had the man’s throat in his massive jaws. Benoit wasn’t moving. His eyes were the size of baseballs as the dog slowly squeezed.

“…call him off…can’t…breathe…,” he said, like I gave a rat’s ass.

I saw the box on the floor next to the driver who was now completely unconscious. I picked it up and tossed it in the back of the Jeep.

“Julius Benoit, how you doin’ there? Is the dog playing too rough with you?”

“…fuck…yoauugghh—.” Cerberus started his twelve-cylinder growl as he tightened his grip.

“You might want to be careful about what you say there, Mr. Benoit. I think he can understand you.”

The guy who got fish-hooked was cursing and stumbling toward the gaping hole in the front of the house. Blood pooled between his fingers and dripped to the ground with sickening plops. “…oooo…stupig moder fuugghhrrr…” He got around the Jeep, but when he tried to step over the debris and out onto the porch, he lost his balance and fell out of sight. He didn’t get up.

Wood and glass crunched underfoot as I walked over to the only upright chair in the room. I swept away chunks of window frame and took a seat. “Nice place you got here.”

He didn’t move. Cerberus had his meaty jaws wrapped around the man’s neck so thoroughly that if he closed his mouth, Mr. Benoit’s head would come clean off. A small trace of blood started to line away from the man’s nose.

“…what…do you…want…”

Down by my feet were the contents of a spilled humidor. I found a cigar cutter and a book of matches amidst the rubble at my feet. “What everyone wants. Peace on Earth, goodwill toward men. But today I’ll settle for some answers.” I took a big draw and blew a cloud of smoke into the air. “Hmm. Not bad. Now, Julius. How’d you know about the box?”

He made some sort of gurgly noise mixed with some broken vowel sounds when my cell phone rang. I checked the caller i.d. Julie.

“Hold on a second. Yeah?”

“Hey, baby. Watcha doin’?”

“Helping a friend redecorate. You?”

A steady buzz came through the receiver for a moment, then she said, “Thinking of you.”

“Oh. That’s…sweet.” Benoit’s eyes were getting even larger now and Cerberus’ growl was getting deeper. “Look, I’d love to play but I’m in the middle of something at the moment.”

“You still looking for your box?”

“Already found it. I should be on my way home any minute now.”

“Okay, baby. I’ll be waiting.”

“Don’t have too much fun while I’m gone.” I put the phone back in my pocket. The man with the open and bleeding face started groaning as he faded back into consciousness. I stood up and walked over to Benoit. “Look, Julius. I’ve got places I’d rather be. So answer my questions so I can get out of here. How’d you know about the box?”

Benoit breathed heavily through his nose for a moment then said, “Darby.”

I figured as much. “How do you know her. Ease up a bit, Cerberus.” The dog relaxed his grip and Benoit sucked in a deep draught of air. I swore the dog actually did understand what we were saying.

He coughed. “Carson.”

“You do some work for him?”

Benoit made a croaking noise that sounded vaguely like a “yes.”

I took another draw from the cigar. “When did Darby tell you about the box?”

“…this afternoon…five, six hours ago.” Right about the time short-bus from Buffalo opened it. Damn, Darby worked fast.

“Well, make sure to tell Darby that I’m viewing this little visitation from you no-necks as a violation of her restraining order. Next time I’ll have her ass hauled off to jail.”

“You…better…better kill me…”

I knelt down next to Cerberus, staring into Benoit’s eyes as I scratched the dog behind his ears. “Julius, I may be a lot of things, but a murderer isn’t one of them.” I stood up. “Don’t know if I can say the same about the dog, though.”

I tossed the cigar onto the chair, whistled, and then the animal and I got into the Jeep. As I backed out of Benoit’s living room, I could see him rubbing his throat as the chair caught fire.

Cerberus shoved his head in the back seat and started sniffing at the box.

“Hey, get away from that. Hey!” I pulled at his head but it wouldn’t budge. When I pulled a little harder, the dog growled and sneered at me. “Whoa, okay. Smell all you want. Jeesh.”

The dog went back to running his nose over the box, sucking in air through his giant nostrils. But after a few seconds, Cerberus gave a snort and then faced the front of the Jeep.

When I got back out onto the road, I dialed Rick. It took three tries before he finally answered. “What..uuuhh…the fibbik…say him where?”

“Rick, you babbling idiot, wake up!”

“I’m up I’m up. What? Dingo?” Rick sounded like he had been gargling rocks. “What’s up?”

“You owe me a new Jeep.”

I heard him take a swig of something then light a cigarette. Rick gave out a belch and said, “So why do I owe you a new Jeep? There something wrong with yours?” I could hear a woman’s voice mumbling in the background.

“Yeah, I just remodeled a home with it.” Rick started laughing. Cerberus nudged over from the passenger seat and sniffed the phone against my ear. His breath smelled of blood and rotten eggs. I gently pushed the dog back, half expecting to lose my arm in the process, but the dog acquiesced.

“What the hell did you do that for?”

“The guy you sold the Z to decided to have a peek.”

Rick’s laughing stopped. It was a few seconds before he spoke. “What happened?”

“What do you think? Darby sent a local goon squad after it.”

“Damn, she could sense it all the way out there?”

I pulled onto the Strip and came to a stop, letting the throngs of people shuffle from one temple of flashing lights to the next. “It doesn’t matter where it’s at. If the box is open, she can sense it.”

“How’d she get muscle out there so fast?”

“Carson.”

“You’re shitting me?”

“Nope. Guess they’re a thing now.”

Rick laughed again, but it was more from nerves than humor. “Well, did you get it back?”

“Yeah, lucky for you.” I was only able to make it two more blocks before I had to stop for another herd of people. “All right, bro,” I said. “I’m on my way back home. Break a leg.”

“Yeah, thanks. And Dingo. I really am sorry, man.”

“It’s cool. Just don’t expect a Christmas card this year.”

I put the phone in my pocket and waited for the lines of people crossing the road to clear. I was tired, torn, and dying to take a hot shower. I entertained the notion of grabbing a hotel, but I didn’t want to spend any more time in this city than I had to.

I gave Cerberus a scratch on his head but then stopped when I saw the people in front of me running away in a panic. It didn’t make any sense until something hit the Jeep like two tons of angry gorilla.

My head hit the side window, spiderwebbing the glass as the back end of the Jeep swung around in a violent arc. I could hear people screaming, their voices wavering from the Doppler Effect created by my spinning Jeep. The front left tire hit the curb and then the Jeep lurched up onto two wheels, balancing for what seemed minutes. Cerberus slid off of the passenger seat and landed on the other side of my head. Gravity disappeared. The flashing lights of the strip danced in awkward ways, but then stopped when the Jeep finally fell on its side in a loud, anguishing screech of metal and concrete.

Outside I could hear more people talking, a few of them shouting. I crawled out of the top of the Jeep and slowly pulled my way onto the sidewalk. Even though the sun had set hours earlier, the pavement was still hot to the touch. But the freshly opened wound over my left eye was distracting me from the pain of burning asphalt. A few people moved closer, chattering away and pointing, but no one moved to help me. They all gawked at me for a moment, some even taking quick little snapshots before continuing on toward the pretty, pretty lights. Lights which for me were quickly fading.

Yep. Business as usual.

Chapter 5: Sharp Dressed Man

2005-10-06T20:44:00.000-07:00

Please see Table of Contents in sidebar for previous chapters.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I just want to take a quick moment and say thank you to all of you who have stopped by to read. I hope you're enjoying the story and will return regularly for weekly updates to our adventure. And, as always, your comments and emails are welcome.

Now, let us return...

I ducked, Cerberus pounced, and Mr. Waciejowski screamed like a dying ferret—a soothing and pleasant sound under most other circumstances, but now only distracting.

I felt the rush of air against my face as the crowbar skimmed my head. The man wielding it was in a black three-piece suit and built like a Texas linebacker. His mass seemed to bend space-time in the parking lot as he barreled down on me. All I could see was nearly seven feet of Armani silk.

I stood upright and brought my knee into his groin and gave him a swift elbow in the small of his back and a fist to the base of his skull. Now, I wasn’t the biggest guy in the world, but I certainly wasn’t the smallest either. And I was also acutely aware of how much damage I could do to another human being. But this hulking mass in Italian finery didn’t even seem phased. The blows I sent this guy should have dropped him like a bag of wet cement, but he just turned and hamstringed me with that damn crowbar.

I fell so hard that one of my teeth chipped. The box flew out of my grip and landed just a few feet away. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Pete on the ground, fumbling with his cell phone while Cerberus mauled another suit trying to sneak up behind me. If the fall hadn’t knocked the wind out of me, seeing Cerberus tear into this guy certainly would have.

The dog was all fangs and fur, making sounds like construction machinery. Thick and heavy. The guy was screaming all kinds of nonsense as he kept his shredded arms in front of his face and neck. Blood and fabric flew about as the animal tossed its head in violent arcs.

I reached for the box but the linebacker gave me a quick swipe over the head with his crowbar, then bent and grabbed it himself. I could feel a gash on my forehead as blood began to trickle down the side of my face and along my neck. I tried to stand, but I was too woozy and I still couldn’t breathe.

The linebacker brought the crowbar down on Cerberus’ head with all of his substantial weight behind it. It landed with a deep thud, but the dog’s head didn’t move from the blow. Cerberus just stopped and slowly turned to the man in the Armani while the other guy used the distraction to crawl out from underneath the dog.

I had a visceral dislike toward Mr. Armani and would do just about anything to see him broken in half. But watching Cerberus stare him down, his growl thundering at 80 hertz, almost made me feel sorry for the guy. Almost.

The dog went at him, hitting him hard enough that he moved back three steps. Cerberus was latched onto the arm that held the box while the guy tried to pound him with the crowbar. I wanted to get in there and help the dog tear him to pieces, but one: there was no way in hell I was getting anywhere near that animal and two: I felt like I was going to throw up.

Blood started getting into my left eye making it difficult for me to see, but I could tell that Mr. Armani was faring better against the dog than his partner had. I was finally able to take a breath and get up on one elbow when I heard tires squeal as a black Mercedes came to a screeching halt just a few feet away.

Mr. Armani dropped the crowbar, then took the box and tossed it to his bloody partner waiting inside the car with the window down. The driver was pale and parts of him seemed to be missing. He caught the box then screamed, “Let’s go! Come on!”

The linebacker tried to pry himself from Cerberus but the dog had too firm a grip on him. The guy was able to weasel out of his jacket, leaving the Italian silk hanging from Cerberus’ mouth like a weather worn Jolly Roger. Instead of making a break to get in the car, Mr. Armani jumped onto the roof, the car’s shocks squeaking and shifting with his weight. He started pounding on the car. “Drive! Drive!”

The car barked and started to speed away while Cerberus chased after it, snapping at its tires. After seeing that dog fight, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if it actually stopped the damn thing. But when the car hit the road, it was gone.

Pete ran over. “Oh my god, oh my god. Are you okay?” He knelt down next to me, oblivious of the pool of my blood he was kneeling in. “I thought that dog of yours was going to kill me. And then I thought that guy was going to kill you. And then I thought your dog was going to kill him. And then I thought…seriously, are you okay?”

I sat up and pressed the palm of my hand against my leaking head. The surrounding area of concrete was spotted with patches of blood. Sadly, a lot of it was mine. “Right now you should be thinking that I’m going to kill you. You had to open the box, didn’t you. You had to look inside.”

Pete stood up and took a step back. “I don’t want any trouble, Mr. Dingo. I just thought you might have drugs or something in there and I didn’t want to get mixed up with that kind of thing. That’s all. I told you, I don’t want—”

“Shut up, Pete. There are no drugs.” I forced myself to stand. I was dizzy and wanted more than anything to puke all over this guy, but to my mild disappointment, the nausea had passed.

“But I don’t understand what they would want with a—”

“You know, Pete. Right now I should be chaining my girlfriend to an old cast-iron furnace. But no. Instead, I’m here, bleeding in a Denny’s parking lot listening to you ask me questions about things that don’t concern you. This is a problem, Pete. And like I told you before, it’s my job to solve problems. But how I solve this particular problem is entirely up to you.”

I wiped a fistful of blood out of my eye. “Now, I can solve this problem my way, orrrrr…you can get in you car and just…go…home.”

For a moment, he looked as if he wanted to continue asking questions, but then reason finally entered his tiny brain and he hopped into my brother’s old Z and sped off. As I watched him leave, Cerberus approached me at a playful gallop. My fight or flight instinct was telling me to get the fuck out of Dodge before this thing could get within eating distance of me, but I was too fazed to move. Fortunately the bleeding seemed to have stopped, or at the very least slowed. But if Cerberus had a mind to eat human flesh, there wasn’t going to be much I could do to stop him.

But when he got to me, he just licked my bloody hand and then nudged me until I scratched him behind his ears. I gently felt the area where the linebacker cracked him over the head with the crowbar but the dog didn’t flinch. And there was no swelling. Damn, this dog was wrong.

I walked over to where the Armani jacket lay in a tattered heap on the ground. I picked it up and fished through the pockets, trying to ignore the disgusting feel of fine Italian silk covered with blood and dog saliva. In the inside breast pocket I found his wallet. There were numerous credit cards, roughly six hundred dollars in cash, and this joker’s driver’s license. Mr. Armani had a name.

And an address.

I pocketed the cash and the license, wiped the wallet down with the filthy jacket, and then tossed it. Cerberus pressed against my leg and licked my hand again. I gave him a pat on his furry head. “Come on, boy. Mr. Julius Benoit was in such a rush that he left some of his things behind. So we’re going to do the responsible, neighborly thing…” I bent over and picked up the crowbar.

“…and return them.”

Chapter 4: The Box

2005-09-25T17:29:00.000-07:00

Please see Table of Contents in sidebar for previous chapters.

Cerberus just stared at me. The dog didn’t blink, he didn’t pant, he didn’t move. He just sat in the passenger seat as I drove, relaxed, mouth hanging slightly open, looking at me the way someone examines a menu but can’t decide on the chicken or the veal.

The desert sky was on fire when the city came into view. Cerberus turned away from me and stuck his head out from the side of the jeep, his giant tongue flapping in the eighty mile an hour wind while I dialed Luna’s number. The dog pulled his head back in, then rested his chin on top of the overhead roll-bar, his fur blowing back along his head like the spines of a porcupine.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Luna.”

“Dingo! Are you there yet?”

“No, not yet. I’m just outside the city.” Vegas flashed and blinked under the starless sky. “You get in touch with Mr. Waciejowski?”

“Sure did. He’s at the Denny’s near the Excalibur. He’s trying to stay away from the blackjack tables.”

“Yeah, good for him. He has the box?”

I could hear Luna stuffing something disgustingly healthy in her mouth. “Mmm hmm.”

“He hasn’t opened it, has he?”

She swallowed. “Nah. I told him it was filled with old photos.”

Cerberus shifted in the seat and scratched behind his neck with such force that the whole Jeep shook; a rather unsettling motion at 80 miles an hour. “Hey Luna, I’ve got a question for you.”

I looked over to see the dog’s nostrils flared out in the wind while his lips blew back and revealed his frightening set of teeth.

“This, uh, this animal spirit guide you had me try to find. Do they ever show up, you know, in person?”

“What are you talking about?”

I switched hands and tried to speak a little more softly into the phone, but the dog’s eyes rolled toward me, fixing me with a black stare. “Do they ever show up for real? Like in corporeal form?”

“Corporeal form? Dingo, are you stoned?”

“No, no. It’s just that someone abandoned a dog at some nowhere gas station. I kinda adopted him.”

“Oooh, a puppy!” Her squeal got Cerberus’ attention. He pulled his head down and stared at me. His fur stood out in wild directions.

“Puppy. Yeah, um...nevermind. Look, I’ll call you when I have the box. In the meantime, if you talk with Rick, tell him he owes me big.”

Luna gave me the man’s cell number and then hung up. Cerberus started to wag his thick tail at the throngs of people milling the streets as we entered the city. By the time I pulled into the Denny’s parking lot, the dog was halfway out of the Jeep. I stopped and the dog jumped out and pissed on the side of a Thunderbird parked next to me. It looked like a damn good idea.

I got the dog back into the Jeep then called Mr. Waciejowski. When he answered, his voice sounded like it had been abused from years of tobacco use. “This is Pete.”

“Mr. Waciejowski, my name’s Dingo. My friend Luna called and told you I was coming. I’m in the parking lot. Yellow Jeep.” I paused. “And a big dog. Can’t miss me.”

A few seconds later, an older man with that classy touch of grey in his hair stepped out of the restaurant, scanned the lot, saw me, then waved. He was about my height, but had a slight stoop in his posture that made him seem smaller. He shirt was all palm trees and sail boats. “You’re Dingo?”

“That’s me. Sorry about all of this but my brother can be a bit absent minded.”

“Got a couple myself. They’re nothing but trouble,” he said. “I’m parked over here.”

I turned to Cerberus and said, “Stay.” The dog ignored me and turned its attention to sniffing the steering wheel. I was going to have to get a leash before this thing started to get hungry and eat one of the passersby. Eh, as long as he didn’t eat me, I guess.

As we walked to Pete’s car, I saw a man skirt us about five cars away, slowly walking parallel to us. “You got a saddle for that thing?” Pete asked.

“The dog? No.” I took a glance back at the Jeep. “Just the ferret.”

“How’s that?”

I could see Rick’s old Z about thirty feet away. I stopped, bent down and pretended to tie my shoe. Underneath the cars I could see through to the Z but couldn’t tell if anyone was standing near it or not.

“So what do you do, Dingo?”

I stood up and gave a quick scan of the parking lot. The man who had been skirting us was gone. “I solve problems for people.”

Pete’s face crinkled. “You mean like tech support or something? I got a cousin who used to work for a small software company. Did theirs until they shipped his job off to India.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Yeah, well he was a bum anyway.”

We reached the Z and Pete started fumbling for the keys. It was strange seeing this familiar car belonging to someone else. Kind of like watching a stranger fondle your ex-wife in that secretive and intimate way that only lovers do. He popped the hatchback, pulled back a black cloth to reveal the box.

It was made of walnut, roughly the size of a bread loaf, and polished to a smooth shine. Oak leaves and acorns were carved along its edges while five names were etched onto the top in rich, flowing script:

Rick Asher, Sr.

Adie Asher

Rick Asher, Jr.

Daniel Asher

Michael Asher

“It’s beautiful,” Pete said.

I’ve never been one for overt emotion, especially in front of strangers while standing in a Denny’s parking lot in Vegas, but sometimes these things hit you when you least expect it. I wanted to say something, take the box and leave, but I couldn’t move. I was lost in those names, the way the script flowed along the lines of the carved leaves, the way the wood grain usually hid the crease of the hinges where the box ope—

“Did you open this?”

Pete gave me another crinkled look. “Well…hey look, friend. When that Luna girl called and said that your brother left something in the car, I thought it was drugs or something. I don’t want to get mixed up in any of that. So yeah, I had to see if—“

I grabbed his shirt and pulled him close. I could smell the cheap coffee and cheaper cigarettes on his breath. “She told you not to open it! How long ago?”

“Hey man, back off.” He struggled to get away but I held him fast.

“How long ago, Pete?”

“Get your hands off me!”

Whenever a person feels threatened, it’s a natural reaction to turn and run or stand and fight. Fight or flight response. The way this joker was pulling at me, I could tell he was more of a flight kind of guy. It was disappointing. “I’m going to ask you one more time. How long ago?”

“I don’t know. Two, three hours ago.” I let go of him. He straightened his tiki shirt over his round belly. “You know, technically that box belongs to me,” he said. “I don’t have to let you have it.”

I reached in, snapped the lid completely shut, then wrapped the box in the cloth and pulled it out. “Pete, get in your new car and go home. You have no idea what you’ve done.”

“What I’ve done? I sat around here for five hours waiting to give you that thing. I think you should…”

Pete’s voice trailed off. I stopped and looked at him. He was pale and slowly creeping around the side of his car. I turned to see what he was looking at. Cerberus was there, standing like a small horse, a deep growl rumbling between his bared fangs.

“Oh, puke.” But then I noticed that the dog wasn’t growling at me. Or Pete. I turned to see what it was that had the dog on edge.

That’s when I saw the crowbar coming at me.