Red Dog (18 page)

Anci rolled her eyes, but truth was, she was thrilled about Opal's visit. In a while Peggy would join the two of them for a sleepover. Jeep and I had business that night.

“I'll be back,” I said.

Anci kissed me on the cheek again. Opal did, too.

“That's two kisses for you,” said Anci.

“Three, counting the first one.”

I went out. Mandy was still in the driveway.

“Why the hell are you still here?” I asked.

She stared up at me from under sparkly purple eyelids, her gum snapping noisily between her lips.

“Why am I still here? Aren't you going to say you're sorry?”

I blinked at her once or twice.

“Sorry? What for?”

“For making me wait.” She blew a pink bubble. “I had things to do, too, you know?”

“Just call J.T. and tell him I'm on the way, okay?”

“I already did that,” she said, and rolled her eyes at the world's injustice. “Mr. Insensitive.”

Z
EIGLER-
R
OYALTON WAS A FORTY-FIVE MINUTE DRIVE, AND
for all I knew J.T. Black would have packed up and split by the time I arrived. If I was right, he had as busy a night ahead of him as I did, but I didn't figure I could pass up a chance for a sit-down heart-to-heart. Besides, he'd been thoughtful enough to send a personalized invitation. I cranked up the radio and hauled ass toward Z.R.

The Elks in town wasn't run by the men's club anymore, hadn't been for ten years or so, but the name and the stuffed buck still occupied the space above its doorway, most likely because everyone was too lazy or too drunk to take them down. Black was inside, hunched over the bar next to a guy with no arms, but otherwise the place was nearly empty. I drew up a stool and sat between them.

“Slim.”

“J.T.”

Black said, “Slim, this is Sticky,” and nodded at his drinking buddy.

J.T. and I shook hands. Sticky shook hands with his eyes.

“You just about missed your chance with me, hayseed,” J.T. said.

“Can you blame me?” I raised my finger for a beer. The bartender got J.T.'s approval before he'd serve me. “Look at the kinds of places you want to take me.”

“You don't like it, man,” the bartender growled, “you can just pack up your shit and take it on down the road.”

The guy without arms thought it was hilarious.

“Hey, no offense,” I offered, and I even showed him my open hands, but I don't think he believed me. In places like
that, offense wasn't taken; it came free with every drink. I said to J.T., “I've been looking all over for you, man.”

“I know you have,” J.T. said. “That's what I wanted to tell you. You can call off the fucking search, man, 'cause I am getting my ass out of this dump.”

I nodded like I knew what he was talking about, but all he did was give me the twice-over with unsympathetic eyes and stroke the beer foam off his mustache. Hard to tell in the gloomy light of the Elks, but I got the distinct feeling that J.T. Black hadn't been getting his eight solid hours a night.

“Might not be the best idea, son,” I told him. “You know, lots of folks are looking for you pretty hard.”

J.T. shook his head sadly.

“Yeah, I've heard tell. Wince. Lindley. The goddamn FBI . . .”

“That's what I've been calling them.”

“You ever hear of a guy named Carter?”

“Just recently, in fact.”

“Yeah, well, do yourself a favor and stay clear of him. He's a tornado with a badge.”

“How about a guy named Tibbs?”

“Him, too.” He looked at me. “Without the shield, though. You know, it's the goddamnedest thing, man. You've been running your ass off looking for Sheldon and A. Evan for, what, a week now?”

“Longer.”

“Yeah, well, I'd be willing to bet my last five bucks you don't even know why.”

“Dennis Reach is why.”

The bartender brought our things, a couple of drafts with foamy heads, an ashtray as clean as they came, and two fingers of something brown in a shot glass for the former Jackson County deputy.

“Denny Reach was a cocksucker,” J.T. said. “Not even worth pissing on, so give that shit a rest, will you?”

“Fair enough,” I said. “That why you killed him?”

He looked at me a long time.

“You're just lucky I didn't kill him, motherfucker,” he said at last. He showed me a mouthful of teeth. “If I did, you wouldn't be walking out of here.”

I opened my mouth to make a crack about his friend being unarmed, but just then the bartender, who didn't like me anyway, slung an evil-looking sawed-off from under the bar and tucked it neatly beneath my chin. If he'd pulled the trigger, what was left of me would have flown backward off the barstool, across the room, and out the door onto the lonely Z.R. streets.

“Put that thing away, Fish,” J.T. said softly, looking over his shoulder. It'd be inaccurate to say that the place froze—it wasn't exactly moving in the first place—but its alcoholic old muscles tightened somewhat, and one or two of the sprightlier drunks cleared their throats and gazed longingly at the spaces beneath their tables. “Fish is from East St. Louis,” J.T. explained when Fish had put it away.

“Ever been to the top of the Arch?” I asked, and for an instant I thought the shotgun would reappear, but J.T. sur
prised us all by braying like a jackass, rearing back to slap his knee, and, in the process, nearly falling off his stool and onto the floor.

“Goddamn, boy, you are a piece of work,” he said. “Hey, Fish, did you hear that shit? You've got a fucking scattergun under the guy's throat, and he wants to know if you've ever been up in the Arch.” He shook his head. “Man, that is rich. That is some rich shit.”

Fish still didn't see the humor in it all. His right eye flickered in little spasms, and the ropy veins in his forehead knotted like they might burst.

“Hey, it's great laughing with you all,” I said, “but I get the feeling you didn't call me out here just to tell me to fuck off. Especially since you were pretty much doing that anyway.”

“You're right, man,” he admitted, awfully cheerful for one of the condemned. “You ever hear of a motherfucker named Norris?”

“Morris? Like the cat?”

“No, man, Norris. With an N. He owns a gun shop in Carbondale, right there across from the mall.”

“So what?”

“So, I sold the gun to him.”

“The AR-15?”

“Long time ago, man,” J.T. said. “I haven't seen that fucking thing in, like, three years, Slim. Honest.”

“Why'd you steal it in the first place?”

The kid shook his head.

“Steal? Hell, man, I didn't steal shit. The gun was mine. I picked it out. I bought it. I'm the only one who ever discharged it. And when the time came to give it up during the divorce, all of a sudden, it was a fucking gift. Shit, I don't have to tell you how messy divorce is, man.”

“I read a book about it once.”

He slid a piece of paper between us. It was stamped with the name of the pawnshop and a date three years ago.

“That doesn't really prove anything,” I said. “You could have retrieved the gun and kept the ticket, or had someone else buy it for you and kept the ticket as an alibi.”

“Three years ago? That's seems a little complicated.”

“It kinda does, yeah.”

“I didn't do it, man.”

“You know what?” I said. “I think I actually believe you.”

He surprised me by saying, “Thanks.”

“Tell me about Sheldon and A. Evan Cleaves,” I said. “Or the Harvels.”

He shrugged, but I could tell he didn't like hearing their names. He made a face like he meant to spit.

“What's to tell? Sheldon used to be a fire boss at one of my old man's mines. The Harvels are nuts. A. Evan's crazier than all of them stacked end to end. This one time when we were kids, he made us play circus. I know it sounds weird, but he was obsessed with circuses. We never wanted to play with him, my brothers and me, but one day he hung some sheets in an old carport at an empty house down the way
and put out some chairs and drew some rings on the floor with chalk, and we came to the circus. He even had tickets. Except when we get there, it's a geek show. You know what that is?”

“I've heard, yeah.”

“Yeah, well, I was seven at the time. Maybe eight. I didn't know. A. Evan had pinched some chickens from one of the neighbors, live chickens, and we sat there watching while he bit off their heads and spat blood and chicken brains all over the walls and all over us. Eventually, he threw up, but I think he threw up from laughing so hard at the looks on our faces.”

“He was seven at the time, too?”

“No. He's younger. He was five or six.”

“Jesus.”

“Jesus never heard of A. Evan Cleaves, Slim,” he said. “Or if he has, he's staying away.”

“So what's their connection to Reach, and why did Reach steal their dog?”

“I honestly don't know, man. I really don't. Dennis and I had a falling out before he brought them on. All I know is that everyone thinks that I know, so it's time to boogie.”

“Just a victim of circumstance, huh?”

“Exactly.”

“Catch you later, then.”

He looked up at me with eyes that were almost sad.

“That's it?”

“That's it,” I said. “I just wanted to hear you say it.”

“You know, man, I don't really blame you for all this. I blame Reach and the rest of the rats. And Tibbs. And A. Evan Cleaves. But my life in this part of the world is pretty much over, man, and it'd be nice if you'd at least act a little sympathetic.”

I dropped some money on the bar.

“Catch you later,” I said again, and walked out.

N
INE O'CLOCK OR SO, WE HEARD A FEW DROPS, THE FIRST
time in a while; it was a drizzle with all of the promise of rain, but none of the follow-through, and it didn't do much to break the heat or soften the baked earth. Some of it came through the tarp on the roof, and Anci and I put out pots and pans to collect the drips. Peggy was there, and Jeep and Opal arrived shortly after. It was time for business. I kissed Peggy and kissed Anci on the head, and then Jeep and I started off without speaking. I guess we both had a pretty good idea what we were about to see, and neither of us was the least bit happy about it.

Two hours later, a last set of taillights bumbled their way down the shadowed lane, glimmered briefly in the wet-kissed air, and disappeared around a stand of redbud trees. The gravel parking lot of Black #5 was nearly half full, and even with the security lamps turned out and the distant moon dim against the rim of some faraway hill, Jeep and I were able to make out shapes in the gloom: groups of men and dogs trotting toward the coal mine, eager to go below.

Jeep swept a dripping bush from his eyes and, scowling, handed me the binoculars.

“What you thought, slick?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Goddamn dogfight,” I growled through grinding teeth. “Goddamn underground fucking dogfight.”

W
E WENT DOWN THE HILL IN THE DARK AND TO THE GATE OF
the mine, where we were met by some men with guns. I showed them my ticket—that slip of paper Tibbs had given me—and they led us into the yard. They didn't talk to us. They didn't talk to one another. Nobody told a joke or sung a song. We were down to business. Moonlight pooled on the barrels of their weapons. We followed them to the mine elevator, where a group of our fellow ticketholders was waiting, as well as some men holding dogs on thick leather leashes.

Finally, the elevator came up, and a redneck holding a TEC-9 stepped forward and said, “Boys, we gonna get on this thing now and go down into the mine. Here's how this works: I tell you to do something, you do it. You don't do it, you might get peppered with this here TEC. 'My clear?”

He must have been clear because nobody said anything. He nodded some and said, “Okay, we want spectators grouped in the middle of the cage, doggers at the edges facing outward.”

That didn't make the boys happy. They didn't want to
stand ass-to-elbows with a bunch of strangers as scummy as they were, I guess. Firearm threats notwithstanding, some of them got vocal about it. Some redneck George Washington decided to lead a mini-revolt for the freedom of the elevator platform and got a rifle stock in the nuts for his trouble. He dropped to his knees with a grunt and was dragged away to his fate.

Everybody else hurried to the middle of the cage. No one wanted a rifle stock in his nuts. Next the doggers were led on and instructed again to stand facing outward, with their backs to one another. Well, none of them wanted to do that, either, and there was another little fuss over it. In the end, though, everybody agreed to obey the guns aimed at their faces. The walking boss's TEC-9 and one or two Cobray M11s. And with the fancy suppressors, too. You've never seen so much agreeing. We were like conservative ministers deciding we hated sin, Satan, and folks on food stamps. When we were finally in position, a beer gut in a quilted Day-Glo vest snapped shut the lanyard. The cage lurched, and we were on our way.

More ways than one, down we went into the dark. The first thing that strikes you about the inside of a coal mine is the cool. Rock and earth are good insulators, and as we sank into the shaft the cold air rose up to meet us like a corpse's breath. Everyone started shrugging into their coats and hats. Jeep put on a ball cap that barely contained his head. I was already wearing my cap, and I hadn't brought extra clothes, so I just jammed my hands in my pockets, which was just as well since I couldn't stop them shaking. A thousand feet
or so later, we rattled to a standstill. “Rattled” is maybe understating it. We hit down with a bang that sent our skeletons into our hats. The cave cold came howling at us like Baskerville's hound.

“This way, gentlemen.”

The gate opened, and the gentlemen disembarked. One of them hocked a serious loogie into the dark. Someone else farted. Just like Camelot. Another armed group led us off the platform and into the work area. It was a different group. They looked the same, but they were missing different teeth. It was a subtle difference, but if you looked closely you could detect it. They waved their guns at us, and we followed them into the main run and five or six hundred yards deeper into what was once a pretty good size room-and-pillar mine. Or still was, maybe. This wasn't an old mine. It was a relatively new outfit—last twenty years or so—and the cuts were clean and the works new. The lighting systems were functional and you could feel the steady breath of the ventilation system as the air coursed through the veins cut in the rock. So maybe we were just in a closed section. You couldn't ask anyone. Asking would get you stitches. Or worse.

Our group was full of stitches and worse. The doggers, especially. No one was pretty, but every one of those doggers was a Frankenstein of wounded parts: scars, cuts, abrasions, missing fingers and flesh. It was like the world had taken a bite out of them. If they'd started comparing scars, they'd have stayed down there until the coal turned back into plant and animal life. Their personal style didn't
do much to smooth out the rough edges. You could have filled twenty barrels with their tattoo ink, and the hairstyles they favored ran the spectrum from twenty-to-life to life-without-parole. Their dogs seemed to be in better shape, but I didn't guess that was going to last much longer.

We finally made it to the room. It was a big one, fifty yards by fifty yards, maybe. The ceiling was low and gave the whole thing a claustrophobic feel. There were lights bolted to the ribs and a fight ring in the center. An ugly woman in a one-piece bathing suit ordered us into a circle at the edges of the room. One of the doggers thought he'd make a romantic pass at her, but she wasn't in the mood for love. She tucked an automatic into his crotch and invited him to take his place. He took his place. He looked vaguely shocked that his manly wiles hadn't panned out. Then Ugly Woman joined another woman, even uglier but younger, and together they started dancing and grinding to some kind of dance music that was bass and nothing else.

“We're in hell,” I said to Jeep.

“Not yet.”

More men came in, and the edges of the room began to swell. The onlookers stood arm's length apart, careful distances. They stacked their firearms and cash at their feet.

“Case the place gets raided,” Jeep explained. “You just walk away. You still get busted, but there's no clear weapons charge.”

“Walk away? You can't just walk away. You're in a coal mine.”

“Principle's sound, though.”

“And I guess no one can prove you were gambling on the fight.”

“Less a sure thing, anyway. Complicates the legal process. Makes deals more likely.”

The MC stepped into the chamber and brushed past us. You could tell he was the MC on account of his clothes: a cream-colored cowboy suit and one of those bolo ties with a scorpion trapped in a chunk of amber. He was wearing a pistol in a patent leather holster. A big .45. He was as short and round as a highway barrel—the MC, not the gun—and his face made me want to give up on humanity once and for all. He had a slung jaw and tiny black eyes and eyebrows that seemed to carpet his entire forehead. Flannery O'Connor would have considered him implausibly grotesque. He pushed through the crowd and into the ring, then squatted down and rubbed his hands through the piles of straw on the floor. He was awfully attentive about that straw. Then he stepped across the pieces of plywood that formed the walls of the ring and raised his hands. There was a roar from the onlookers. It was on, I guess. I felt my stomach drop.

Jeep pushed earplugs into his head. “You sure you got the stomach for this, slick?” he asked, and when I looked a question at him he grumbled, “Once. Down in goddamn Broward County, Florida. I was drunk off my ass; the place was full of asshole Marines. Only reason I left without killing anyone is I got hit from behind with a fucking parking meter.”

“Parking meter?”

“Yup.”

“An actual parking meter?”

“Full of coins, too. Must have been a busy street, wherever it was. I chewed a bottle of aspirin every day for a month, washed it down with a fifth of Cabin Still, and the headache's still never quite gone away. But at least I stopped seeing double.”

“And now you get to see this.”

Highway Barrel barged into our conversation.

“Tickets, boys.”

I handed over the slip of paper Tibbs had given me. Highway Barrel held it in his palm like a dog turd.

“This ain't quite the right one,” he said. “This was the one from a while ago. You should have the new one.”

For an instant, I nearly panicked. Then I got myself together and said, “Leonard said it would be all right.”

“Leonard?”

“Black.”

He looked shocked by that.

“I . . . might need to call for confirmation,” he said.

“Go ahead,” I said. “Call him from the mine tonight. Call his home. Leave a record for the cops.”

“That's not what I meant,” he stammered.

“What
did
you mean?” Jeep said, catching on.

“I don't know.”

“Well, maybe now you do know,” I said.

He stared at us a moment more, but then he took the ticket and went away. The next guy handed over his ticket without hesitation. Highway Barrel still found a reason to read him the riot act up one side and down the other.

Jeep whispered, “Think that was smart, slick? Bringing Black into it? Now the little guy almost has to call.”

“Yeah, but he won't call tonight, I'm guessing. And even if he did, it's hard to imagine they'd care too much. This is bullshit, man. The Cleaveses might be psychopaths, but even they aren't stupid enough to kill somebody over a game this small.”

Jeep inclined his head toward the ribs of the mine tunnel, first one way, then the other.

“Check it out, slick,” he said.

I couldn't make out what he was talking about at first. But then my eyes adjusted to the shadows, and sure enough, there they were: webcams, digital cameras built to transmit live images directly to the Internet.

“You're kidding? We're on the YouTube?”

“Not that. But we're definitely online somewhere. Could be a hidden link,” Jeep said. “Part of an at least halfway legit streaming service. Subscribers only.”

“Wouldn't the cops be able to find something like that?”

“Most cops couldn't find their own butts with a road map and an extra hand,” he said. “But, yeah, maybe. That is, if they were looking, which they probably aren't. Their best shot would be if some animal cruelty outfit were monitoring the web for shit like this. But then again, you can bet your ass that site isn't advertising itself.”

“So what—it might be part of some otherwise-legit gambling thingy?”

Jeep grinned. “Site?”

“Yeah. Site.”

“Yeah, it could be part of something semi-legit,” said Jeep. “But it probably isn't. I had to bet, I'd say it's probably hiding behind something pretty run-of-the-mill. Something you'd never suspect. And the link to the real shit could be invisible.”

I was about to ask him to explain all that when another cage-load of men and dogs arrived. Suddenly the room was too full. Everyone lost their breathing room and stood scowl to scowl. One guy's tattoo took up on the next guy, and so on, forming a giant, horrible tapestry. Something like that could never last. This wasn't a meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention—it wasn't that mean—but it was close. Someone would say something or smell something, there'd be a wink or a laugh or a nothing, and hell would break lose. The room was itching for reasons to murder. Highway Barrel must have known it, too, because just then the lights flickered, the sad dancing girls started jumping and waving their arms, and the show was under way.

“Hold your breath, bro,” Jeep said.

Now the man in charge took the center ring, grinning like a moray eel, his double chins spreading across the bottom of his face.

“Pure.” He smacked the word between his swollen lips. His face beamed in maniacal glee. I wanted to hit him and never stop. “In a world of bullshit, liberal media lies, homo propaganda, and PC revisionism, what we have is pure. Muscle, bone, teeth, fur, and blood.”

The crowd loved it. They wouldn't have known a liberal revisionist from a chicken in a dress, but they loved it. His
speech had the word “liberal” in it, and they'd been trained to hate that word and all it stood for. These were poor guys, most of them. You could tell by their clothes, their hairstyles, and their choice of pastime. A lot of them were on public health. One older guy in a corner was rocking a brace he probably got from the state. But somehow none of that counted as the dole. The dole was what
everyone else
was on, and they hated them for it.

“And by moving underground, into the secret places of the world, we'll show them that pure things survive and thrive, even in shadows. We . . .”

Someone switched on the boom box, interrupting him. Thank the gods. The girls reappeared, dancing and fondling each other in a display of sad eroticism while Highway Barrel grumped his way out of the ring and the first dogs grumped in, led by boys no older than fifteen or sixteen. Tomorrow's sociopaths, today. The dogs were underweight pits, bony things with sharp ribs and knobby knees. The muzzles came off, and they flung themselves together with the nauseating sound of crunching cartilage and flattening muscle. The men around us rushed the edges of the ring in a sudden stampede. If Jeep hadn't been there, I'd have been trampled.

And after what happened next, I sort of wish I had been. The dogs locked jaws and snarled. There was a spray of blood. And that was about it. Almost as fast as it started, the bout ended. One of them lost part of an ear, and the other was bloody around the eyes, but when the men in the hunting vests separated them using long metal rods, the animals
trotted back to their disappointed masters as though nothing much had happened.

“Rookies,” a kid with pimples said to me. Maybe he'd pegged me as the new guy and wanted to be buds. “That bigger dog's got some promise. Not much, but some. The little guy's going to get himself killed, though.”

“Yeah?”

“Hells, yeah,” he said. “He's twenty pounds underweight if he's an ounce. He'll get in a serious fight one day and . . . poof. Doggie all gone, man.”

I didn't want to be buds back. I wanted to start a chain reaction that, in the fullness of time, would lead to the boy shitting his own teeth. But just then the next contenders emerged. These were bigger things. Scarier things. Pimples went nuts with applause, along with the rest of the room.

“Playtime is over, man,” he said over the noise.

The dogs were called King's X and Ripper, and they were old pros. Their owners were muscleman types with loads of oozy tats on their arms and shoulder blades. When they looked at their animals, it was with the frozen appraisal of a pair of robot killers. I felt Jeep buzzing beside me. He wanted to kill them, too.