Red Dog (25 page)

“I'll try.”

“Text me the poopy emoticon, you get into a jam.”

I said, “Do I have that one?”

“Just watch yourself, man.”

I promised to watch myself. I promised to text the poopy emoticon. I closed the door and climbed the rest of the drive on foot and walked up to the house. It was a modest little frame house, probably built in the 1920s, painted white but dulled some by time and patches of moss from the encroaching woodland. There was a potbellied stove rusting in the yard. The door of the stove was open and a cat curled up inside asleep. There was a brown El Camino in the drive, but it was on blocks and it was the only vehicle in sight, so I thanked the midi-chlorians and walked around back of the house hoping to steal some chickens all easylike.

The back property was more woodland, spotted with young persimmon trees and sloping further upward until maybe two hundred yards on it was braced by a hogback of red sandstone. But no chickens or chicken houses. Not even a feather. I went to the back door and took out my tools but you could tell just by looking I wasn't going to need them. I hesitated a moment. This was getting into a whole other thing here. Breaking and entering. Plus, there might be someone inside. It didn't look like there was, but you never knew. Regardless, I'd promised to get those birds, and Anci wanted to try the eggs. Truth was, I wanted them too. They had nutrition and there was science to back it up. I stole myself for the rough work ahead. I pushed gently against the knob with one hand and the bolt pressed against its strike plate and loosed its screws from rotten wood. The door receded with a sigh. I went inside and closed the door
behind me and my eyes began to adjust to the dimmer light. When they did, I froze and my mouth dropped open and I think I might have even said a bad word.

The kitchen was gorgeous. The stove probably cost more than my car; it was one of those restaurant-grade things, with eight burner-things and the separate warmer pad and a ventilation hood the size of a coffin. The counters were poured concrete, and a steel-frame island was topped with what must have been a half ton of butcher block and a brace of professional-looking knives. What at first I took to be an oddly placed gun cabinet instead held maybe two dozen glass jars filled with dried spices and a mad scientist's collection of salts and seasonings.

“Day-yum.”

I turned. Anci, of course, standing in the doorway and gawking like I was gawking.

I said, “Dang it all, I told you to wait in the car.”

“You ran off without your phone, genius,” she said. I had. She handed it to me and lifted her nose toward the room. “This is quite a sight. How come our kitchen isn't this nice?”

“How come our anything isn't this nice?” I said. “Besides, I wouldn't have any idea what to do with half of this stuff. This thing, for instance.”

“Ravioli maker,” Anci said.

“Really?”

“There's a bread maker over there, too. But more to the point, I think I hear chickens.”

I did, too. A muffled clucking, somewhere nearby. We walked through the rest of the house—which looked more like a regular house—and to a doorway beneath a set of stairs leading upward to what I took to be a small loft. We opened the door and walked down some steps into a cellar where Foghat's chickens were clucking away inside their cages: Belgian d'Uccle, Araucana, Welsummer, Cochin, salmon Faverolle, cuckoo Marans, modern BB red game. You name it. Even some of them white Sultans. Their feathers were all colors, or else they were spotted or striped, and sometimes they were both. They were kind of beautiful, I'll be honest.

Anci said, “You think this is them?”

“Funny,” I said. “Let's get them and get out of here before the chef comes home.”

East wall, there were double cellar doors such that you could walk up and out onto that side of the property, you wanted, but when we tried them they were locked from the other side.

“Guess we'll have to carry them through the house,” I said.

“Everything has to be the hard way,” Anci said.

I brought down a cage from the top of the stack. Best to get started. A brilliant green bird looked at me with those dark eyes that are so much like a doll's eyes.

“Don't worry, little lady,” I said. “I'm going to get you out of here.”

A voice said, “That's a rooster, dumbshit.”

And with that, a shadow draped itself over the room.
It was like the light bulb had sparked out and the little cellar windows had blinked their lids.

Behind me, Anci's voice was impressed. “That's no moon. It's a space station,” she said.

I turned and looked. It wasn't a space station. It wasn't even a moon. It was bigger than that.

It was Little Bandit.

H
E SAID, “
W
ELL, WELL, LOOKS LIKE WE GOT US A COUPLE
chicken thieves here.”

I tell you, this was a glacier of a man. He was so wide he filled the cellar door stop to stop and so tall he had to tilt his neck slightly to avoid notching his clean-shaved head on the top of the frame. His eyes were too small for his face and his mouth and lips too wide for it, like they couldn't figure out how to manage that enormous head. His arms and hands looked like two industrial Shop-Vac hoses were trying, unsuccessfully, to suck up a pair of giant uncooked hams.

I reached back and pressed Anci a little further behind me. I was cussing myself for bringing her along and I was cussing myself again for forgetting my phone in the truck. I was cussing myself for taking this ridiculous job in the first place, and cussing chickens and other birds of all kinds everywhere and at any altitude. Mostly, though, I was cussing Little Bandit.

I said, “I was about to say the same thing. Except there's just one of you.”

“How do you figure?”

“Figure the first thing or figure the second thing?”

“The first one.”

I said, “Well, you did take them, didn't you?”

Little Bandit shrugged.

I said, “Took them and refused to return them, once the terms of your agreement with Foghat were met?”

Little Bandit shrugged.

I said, “That true? 'Cause if it's not—if Foghat still owes you, I mean—we will walk out of here right now without fuss.”

Little Bandit said, “It's true. As far as you walking out of here, though, that is another story entirely. Foghat eventually gave me what he owed me, sure, but he made me work double for it. Had to chase him, on the phone, on the computer, on foot. Even had to hire out a little help.”

“Yeah, we heard some about that, too,” I said. “Goons aren't cheap these days, are they?”

He took that with another shrug. “Cousins of mine, actually. Plus one buddy of the cousins. Nice fella. Lost his job recently and needed some work.”

“I don't care.”

He said, “So, yeah, I got my money, but I got it and I'm not too happy, you understand? Usually, I get paid back with a little cinnamon sprinkled on top, I'm happy. But the way this thing went down, way Foghat made me wait and work and sweat, I ain't exactly throwing a party. So I decided to keep his birds. Teach him a lit
tle lesson. Plus maybe the next guy hears the word and doesn't make me sweat so much.”

“Tell you what,” I said. “Let me take this kid out of here, drive her home, then I'll come back and you and I can talk some more or dance or whatever it is you want to do.”

Anci said, “Over my dead body.”

“Hush.”

Little Bandit said, “Sorry, Slim. Like to help you. Really would. But you pretty much fucked the monkey coming out here like this, breaking into my house, and trying to make off with my things.”

“That last business is still under dispute.”

He nodded. “Okay, you can have that one. That last one. The other things, though, there ain't no dispute about it. Unless you just somehow materialized down here in my basement.”

Anci said, “Could have been the midi-chlorians.”

“I don't exactly follow that,” said Little Bandit. “Though having that business thrown in my face don't make this any more pleasant. The midi-chlorians. They damn near ruined the franchise with that nonsense.”

“That's how I feel about it,” Anci said.

“What was the matter with just the Force?” said Little Bandit. He threw up his hands. “It was a perfectly elegant explanation for the universe's supernatural cosmology. I just don't get it.”

Anci shook her head. “Shoddy screenwriting.”

Little Bandit looked at Anci. Anci looked at Little
Bandit. Both of them nodded. Agreement had been reached.

“Little miss,” he said, “I like you. Like your handle on things. Might even like to get your thoughts on the expanded universe one day, this latest movie. But right now I got to take care of business with your dad. You ain't got nothing to worry about. I'd never hurt a kid, and I ain't even gonna hurt your daddy too bad. Just shove him around a little, put a foot up his ass to teach him a lesson about sticking his nose in.”

“We could call the police,” Anci said.

Little Bandit nodded. “Could at that. Can't even say I'd blame you, really. Course, it'll take them an hour or more to get out here, and once they do I'll just have you arrested for breaking in. Man's got a right to protect his home, disputed chickens or no.”

I said, “That's the way it is, let's stop talking and start punching.”

Little Bandit came down the stairs. He came down like a locomotive. Anci leapt out of the way and hugged the wall. The chickens clucked in alarm. Somewhere, a bolt of lightning knocked a bald eagle out of the sky.

For a big man, Little Bandit was surprisingly fast. He came in low and grabbed me around the waist and tossed me backward hard and to the ground. I rolled out of the way of the aforementioned foot-in-ass and sprang upright just as one of those giant paws of his cut the air mere inches from my head. I rolled left, stopped, and pivoted back into him with the full force of my elbow, but
I might as well have been trying to knock down a schoolhouse. He grinned and thumbed a loop of blood from the end of his nose and came in again, circling right this time. I circled left, put my right foot back, and assumed the fighting stance. Then we stopped, the both of us.

Anci had stepped between us with her phone to her ear.

Little Bandit said, “Little miss, please.”

I said, “Darlin', get out of the way.”

Anci ignored us. She was making a call.

Little Bandit looked at me. He said, “She's calling the cops. I told you what'll happen.”

Anci shook her head. She said, “Not the cops. Animal Control and the Illinois Department of Public Health.”

“Come again?”

“You got yourself a mess of exotic animals stored down here in your basement without any of the proper permits, inspection stamps, or immunization records.”

Little Bandit looked at me, confused.

“What the hell she talking about, Slim?”

“She's talking about these just aren't regular yardbirds. You can't just keep them in your private residence like this without the proper paperwork and an inspector's okay.”

Anci looked up. “Time the IDPH and the Animal Control people climb out of your asshole, you'll wish I'd just called the cops. You'll wish I'd called the cops, SWAT, and the dang Avengers.”

Little Bandit took a step back. He raised his hands and opened his palms and showed us his lifeline. “Okay, okay. I don't want any truck with any of that.”

Anci said, “That's assuming they crawl out of your asshole in the first place. They might want to quarantine your entire property, keep you under observation for a week or two. Maybe longer. Maybe a lot longer. Never know what kind of germs these birds are carrying around. You heard about this business in China? It's horrible.”

Little Bandit had started to sweat now. His upper lip winked at us from across the room. He said, “I'm sure Foghat had all that looked after.”

“Foghat? The guy who's divorced the same woman three times? The guy who made you sweat and dance and work for your lousy vig? The guy who had to sell his truck to pay you off? That Foghat?”

Little Bandit was practically quaking now. His eyes went this way and that. His tongue came out of his mouth with a dry sound.

Anci said into her phone, “Oh, hey, Janet. It's me, Anci . . .”

Little Bandit looked at me. He croaked, “She knows the Department of Health people?”

“Oh, Anci knows everybody.”

Little Bandit lurched forward and snatched the phone from Anci's hand. He said, “Sorry, Janet,” into the mic and used his big thumb to cancel the call. He handed Anci back the cell with an apologetic face.

“Guess what?”

“Chicken butt.”

He ignored Anci. “Guess what? I've changed my mind about this whole thing. Got an idea. Why don't y'all take those birds and move on along? Right now. This instant. Hell, I'll even help you load them up, you give me a minute to tie something over my mouth.”

Anci thought about it a little. She appeared dubious at first, but then she warmed some to the idea. Finally, she nodded seriously and said, “Well . . . okay. I guess that's okay. I was you, I'd still see a doctor, though, quick as you can.”

“Thanks. I will. Frankly, though, I just want them and their germs out of here. And you. Both of you. No offense.”

“None taken,” she said. She smiled suddenly. “Hey, by the way, that is one hell of a damn kitchen you got up there.”

'N
OTHER LITTLE WHILE, WE WERE ON OUR WAY BACK
north past the Experimental Forest and the long curve of Goose Creek. The light had gone down and the day had gone cool. The chickens were in their cages in the bed of the truck, neatly secured under a new tarp, courtesy of Little Bandit. Anci had phoned Foghat, who was one his way from Olney to meet us, recover his pets.