Get Off the Unicorn (25 page)

Like the incredible noise that issues from a cyphering organ played full through faulty stops, a chorus of strident howls arose. Starting with the piercing yelps of nearby dogs, it grew in intensity and volume as Maria, battered and pain-racked, summoned aid. It came bounding in answer to her call. With uncharacteristic ferocity, three poodles and a terrier launched themselves at the stretcher men. Before Finch could touch Maria, a collie and two boxers cut him off, snapping and snarling. The indignant doorman was tripped by a frantic cocker, who plunged at him from the lobby.

“Christ Almighty, she's called
all
the dogs,” Joe cried.

A yelping, yapping, yipping vortex of sound with a rumbling, roaring ground-bass enveloped the area. The street soon became a seething mass of dogs, from ragged Scotties to leaping Dalmatians. More kept arriving on the scene, many dragging snapped ropes and chains, towing stakes, one even hauling a doghouse.

“She's called too many! She'll get hurt,” Pete groaned.

As one, Pete and Joe started across the street, stepping on and over dog bodies. Pete caught a glimpse of a protective ring forming around Maria's man-abandoned stretcher.

“Maria! Maria!” he shouted over the tumult. “Call off the dogs. Call them off!”

The sheer press of numbers would overrun her. Kicking, flailing, Pete waded on. A cat, leaping from a stopped car roof, raked him with her claws. Joe reached the curb and fell, momentarily lost under the bounding bodies.

Suddenly, as if cut off by an invisible conductor, all sound ceased. The silence was as terrifying as the noise, but now the momentum of the charging animals faltered. Pete made it to the sidewalk in that hiatus. Neither Maria nor stretcher nor sidewalk was visible under the smooth and brindled, spotted, mottled, rough and smooth blanket of dogs and occasional cats.

Cursing wildly, Pete and Joe labored, throwing the stunned animals out of the way until a space was cleared around the overturned stretcher. The upset bird cage rolled down to the sidewalk, coming to rest with the bent door uppermost. A flurry of orange and yellow feathers, frightened canaries flew hysterically aloft, their frantic chirps ominous and shrill.

Unable to move, Pete watched as Joe carefully turned the stretcher over. The two men stood looking down at Maria's crushed and bloodied body, trampled by the zeal of her would-be protectors. Then, moved by some obscure impulse, Pete joined her hands.

At this point, the dogs, released from the weird control that had summoned and then immobilized them, remembered ancient enmities. The abortive rescue mission turned into a thousand private battles.

Out of the corner of his eyes, Pete saw Wizard coming hell-for-leather down the street. Finch staggered to his feet, clawing his way up, using the bird cage as a support. With a howl, Wizard knocked him down again. Pete grabbed the man and arrested him for disturbing the peace. Wizard stood guard, in much better shape than any of Maria's other protectors, thanks to his late arrival.

The news story never mentioned that a human had been killed in the great dog riot. But it was noted that the unearthly canine choruses that had been plaguing Wilmington ended with that unscheduled concert.

But sometimes now when Pete Roberts is walking the beat with his K-9 partner, Wizard will suddenly start acting itchy and nervous. He whines and pulls, straining against the lead.

“Heel,” Pete says stolidly, pretending nothing's happened.

One of these days I'll really put on the pressure.

 

 

Finder's Keeper

P
ETER TURNED IN
four dozen golf balls including the monogrammed ones that Mr. Roche had been yelling about. The course manager was almost cheerful as he counted out Peter's finder's fee.

“You've got a positive genius for scrounging balls, Pete. Don't know how you do it.”

“My mother says everyone's got something they're good at,” Peter replied, and began to edge out the door of the stuffy office. Comments like that made him nervous: he half-expected he'd given away his secret, and that he and his mother would be forced to run away again.

The manager only grunted and muttered about keeping the members happy. Peter ducked out, running home with his pocketful of dollars. Mother would be pleased, although she didn't like him using his trick of “finding” for “material gain,” as she put it. But since she'd been too sick to work at the diner, they had precious little choice. Peter had wanted to get a full-time job as a caddy but his mother had resisted.

“You can't be like me, Peter. You got to have education and training. Your father was a smart man, but he didn't have enough education.” Dedication made her eyes burn in her thin face. “It's education that matters in this world, Peter. You got to go to school.” She emphasized her last statement by stringing the words out and enunciating them clearly.

Peter adored his mother but he hated her attempts to imitate a “country club” accent: her habit of quoting country clichés only ruined the effect she wanted to produce.

Seven dollars he was bringing home today. Not bad, added to the twenty-two he'd made caddying over the weekend. This week's rent, food, and some of the medicine were now paid for. If he could just talk Mother into letting him take a week off school now that the rains had stopped and spring sun was drying the greens, he'd really make some money! Mr. Roche always tipped a fiver, especially when Peter kept track of those monogrammed balls of his that he always swatted into the rough.

“Son, if you could patent that ball-homing instinct of yours,” Mr. Roche had said more often than Peter liked, “you'd be a millionaire!”

It had made Peter almost scared to continue caddying for Mr. Roche, but the money was too tempting.

He came around the corner of their house trailer and skidded to an abrupt stop in the mud. Ken Fargo's green Mustang was parked on the concrete apron. The only good thing about his mother being sick, in Peter's estimation, was that she didn't have to be pleasant to creeps like Ken Fargo.

“He's pleasant enough and all that,” his mother had said and then shuddered, smiling quickly to reassure Peter. “There's just something . . . slippery about him.” She sighed. “I suppose he can't help being sour and suspicious. People do and say the most awful things to collect insurance! And he's lonely.”

His mother would understand being lonely. And she'd understand the awful things people do and say—particularly if you're different in any way. But the knowledge hadn't made her sour, just more lonely, and sad, and cautious. Why she called Peter's knack of finding things a “gift,” he didn't know. He felt it was a curse. It had brought them more grief, kept them moving around in the period before he'd learned not to “find” everything lost . . .

And why did Ken Fargo have to get unlost? They had thought him well gone when the insurance company that used him as an investigator had called off the search for the hijacked furs. There had been a reward of $15,000 for the return of those coats. Try as he would, Peter hadn't been able to figure out a legitimate way to “find” those furs. He hadn't been with the searchers when they'd looked in the old lead mine, or he'd have “found” the furs under the concealing layer of rubble in the ore carts. He couldn't go there alone now. That old shaft was dangerous, the supports worm-ridden and damp-rotted. Every kid in town had been warned, on pain of a strapping, to stay away.

Peter paused at the front of the house. He didn't want to go in. He didn't like the way Ken Fargo looked at his mother, and there wasn't much a thirteen-year-old boy could do to a six-foot man who'd fought his way out of some nasty corners (Fargo's words), and
looked
it from the scars on his face and knuckles. Peter took a deep breath and stomped up the two boxes that made steps into the trailer.

Peter knew the moment he walked in that Fargo had been badgering his mother. She was flushed and wringing her hands.

“Peter!” She all but swooped down on him. “Did you have a good day?” She was terribly relieved to see him.

“Sure did, Mother.” He held out the seven dollar bills. “Hello, Mr. Fargo.” He had to acknowledge the man's presence or his mother would chew him out for bad manners no matter how much she disliked Fargo.

“Long time no see,” the man replied, jerking his shoulders to settle a flashy gold sports jacket. He sauntered toward the back of the caravan. “Sorry your ma's been ill. Should've let me know.”

Peter blinked at him in surprise.

“Seven dollars,” his mother was saying, her voice more natural now. “Oh, Peter, that's wonderful. Were you caddying?”

“That's just for scrounging golf balls.”

Something happened in the room, some indefinable change in the air that registered against Peter's senses. When he looked at Ken Fargo, the man was occupied in lighting a cigarette. Peter glanced at his mother but she was proudly smoothing out the bills and arranging them all face up before she put them in her handbag.

“Peter's such a help,” she said to Fargo, an artificial heartiness in her soft voice. “We've been just fine. I'll be back at work this week, but it was very nice of you to drop by and see us.” She took two steps toward Fargo, her hand extended.

Fargo ignored the hand and sat down as if he meant to make a long visit. The knock at the door was a welcome diversion and Peter nearly collided with his mother as they both answered the summons.

“Oh, Mrs. Kiernan, have you seen my Victor?” It was Mrs. Anderson from two trailers down. Her three-year-old had such a perverse habit of straying that the distraught mother had taken to tying him to an old dog run. “I told Henry the rope was frayed. I was doing the wash and I just didn't notice. I suppose I should've checked when I didn't hear him fretting, but I wanted to finish . . . so I don't know how long he's been gone. Have you seen him? What with being home and all?”

Peter bristled at the implied insult, but his mother shot him a look, for she'd often let him “find” Victor. Mrs. Anderson was a nice woman, his mother had said, and had more than a wayward child to burden her.

“No, Mrs. Anderson, I haven't seen Victor this morning,” his mother replied.

“Which way is he likely to go, Mrs. Anderson?” Ken Fargo asked.

“Oh, I just dunno. He could be halfway to town by now.” The woman twisted back the lock of lank bleached hair that had escaped its pins. She swiveled her body slightly, looking pointedly at the green Mustang.

“Well, that's no problem. C'mon, Pete, you and me will take a little spin and see if we can locate the lady's wandering boy.”

Peter gave his mother a swift look, and she gave him a barely perceptible nod.

“Shouldn't be no time at all before we have him safely back in your arms, Mrs. Anderson. Now don't worry. For one thing I'm an insurance investigator, and finding lost things is my
business
.”

Again that electric feeling charged the air, but before Peter could appeal to his mother, Ken Fargo had hustled him out the door and into the car, all the time driveling reassurances to Mrs. Anderson.

“Roll down that window, Petey boy,” the man said, and Peter set his teeth against the irritating familiarity. “Keep a sharp eye out on your side. I'll take care of mine.”

Fargo's tone, smugly confident, gave Peter fair warning. Somehow Fargo thought that Peter could “find” things. Somehow Peter had to discourage him.

“You just sing out when you see that brat, Pete. This car'll stop on a dime and hand you back six cents—inflation, you know, ha ha ha.” Fargo deftly turned the Mustang into the road to town. Peter didn't protest although he knew that Victor Anderson was moving steadily in the opposite direction. “And I've got a bone to pick with you.”

Startled, Peter looked around, but the man's frown was bogus.

“You should've let me know your mother was ill. She's a fine woman, your ma, and deserves the best. She could've had it if you'd let me know.”

“We got along all right.”

“Yeah, but she'd be much better now with the kind of food and care I could've provided. And I'd like to provide for her; you get what I mean?” An elbow prodded Peter in the ribs.

“We prefer to do for ourselves, thank you.”

“You're a good kid, Peter, but there're things a man can do that a boy can't.”

Peter wanted to wipe that look from Fargo's face.

“Hey, you keep your eyes peeled for that kid. Let's find him in a hurry and get back. I got something to ask your ma and you might as well hear it, too.”

Peter obediently faced the window, but they reached the middle of the town without a sight of any child.

“How about that? We gotta search the whole town. I thought you said the kid went into town.”

“No, sir. Mrs. Anderson said she thought he'd be halfway to town by now.

“Well, goddammit, where is he?”

Peter looked Ken Fargo straight in the eyes. “I don't know.”

The man's face turned grim, then as suddenly assumed a forced good humor. “All right, kid. If he didn't go into town, maybe he went out of town?”

“Maybe someone's found him already. There's Officer Scortius.”

The policeman was not the least bit pleased to hear that the Anderson kid was missing again, and his remarks confirmed Peter's private opinion that Mrs. Anderson was a prime nuisance in the tiny community of Jennings, Colorado. Fargo brandished his investigator's credentials, an additional irritant to Scortius, who'd been forced to muck around the countryside trying to find the lost shipment of furs “alleged” to have been stashed somewhere near Jennings.

“Well, I'll see who we can find to help track the brat.”

“I'll do the main road out of town.”

Officer Scortius grunted and waddled off.

As they drew alongside her trailer, Mrs. Anderson was hanging over the bottom half of her door, the picture of maternal anxiety. Clearly Victor had not been recovered, but Fargo assured her heartily that it was only a matter of moments, and gunned the Mustang countryward.

“Okay, Pete, let's find that kid and end this soap opera,” Fargo said between his teeth. “How far up the road is he?”

“Gee, how would I know?”

“How would you know? Because you'd
know!”
The man's tone emphasized his certainty and Peter felt sick fear curl up from the pit of his belly. “I get around the country, Petey boy. And I hear things, interesting things.” He paused and his voice took on a conciliatory tone. “Look, Petey boy, I like your mother. I want to take care of her the way a man can. She shouldn't have to work herself sick to give you a decent place to live and a good education. I know how set she is to see you educated. But you don't need much book learning to get ahead. Not you. You know, with your trick, we could be a team, you and me. In fact, we would be a top-drawer unbeatable team of private investigators.”

That insistent, persuasive voice was bad enough; the arguments were worse. Fargo knew exactly how to get to Peter.

“Wouldn't that be great? Your ma not having to work anymore? And you, kid, you've been handicapped. You've made mistakes. It was foolish, you know, to find Lyle Grauber's missing stocks! To say nothing of that Cadillac in Colorado Springs!” Fargo's laugh was unpleasant and Peter cringed. That Cadillac business had meant they'd had to leave one of the nicest apartments they'd ever had. That was when they had decided that Peter better check with his mother before he “found” anything. There'd been a fortune in old five-dollar bills hidden in that Cadillac—and he couldn't tell the authorities how he'd known where it had been hidden.

“Yes,” Fargo was saying in an ominously casual way, “the police are still looking for the kid who told them where to find that Caddy—and skipped. They want him bad.”

The Mustang, like the Cadillac, had become a trap.

“You're mistaking me for someone else, Mr. Fargo,” Peter managed to say in a steady, apologetic voice.

“Oh, no, I'm not. I'm a top-flight investigator because I'm smart. I put isolated clues together and come up with open-and-shut convictions.”

If you looked adults in the face, they tended to think you couldn't be lying; but it took every ounce of self-control that Peter had learned in thirteen years to look Ken Fargo squarely in the eyes.

“You are wrong, Mr. Fargo. I've never been in Colorado Springs. And gee, if I could find things like you do and get reward money, I sure would have tried to for my mother's sake.”

“How do you know about reward money, kid?”

“Mother told me that your company gives you ten percent of the value of anything you recover for them.”

Fargo grunted at that, but just on the other side of the town limit sign, he braked, swearing with impatience.

“Where's that brat? C'mon, kid, where is he? You know!”

And Peter did. Victor was cutting across the Omers' meadow, out of sight of the road, and heading toward the old mines. Peter knew he'd better find the kid soon, but he'd have to get rid of Ken Fargo first and how was he going to manage to do that?

“No, Mr. Fargo, I don't know.” Peter stared the man straight in the eyes. “I wish I did because Mrs. Anderson always tips fifty cents when someone brings Victor home.”