Bobby D. Lux - Dog Duty (18 page)

“Tight squeeze there,” I said.

“You play checkers?” Henry said.

“A blue blood like you,” I said, “I imagined you for a chess player.”

“Not a chance.” Henry’s office was a plain one with spots of character hidden throughout. An old striped couch hugged the wall nearest the door. A bookshelf across from me kept Henry’s personal stash of hooch and treats. His tastes were uniquely un-British; no Earl Grey Tea for this dog. It was all exotic mixes and liquors. A walk-in humidor was next to the bookshelf and was close to being depleted. A slow burning flame in the fireplace kept the room more comforting than I expected. “A lot of blokes’ll tell ya that chess is the game of the elite, the brains, a true sign of intelligence, but I think they is right wrong on that regard.”

“Right wrong, huh?” I said. “That accent you’re sporting cuts through my ears like a blender, a sure sign of class if ever there was one.”

“It’s supposed to be a war, this chess. That’s what they say, right? But it’s not how war is played. You do whatever it takes to win. No rules except last dog left standin’ is the winner. Too many rules in chess. You gonna tell me that that a castle piece can’t go one way even if it means that ‘is side’ll win the game? In a real game of life an’ death, that castle piece would go wherever ‘e ‘ad too if it mean ‘e was like to open ‘is eyes the next morning, you see? Now checkers, that’s the game for me and for any true dog. Any piece can win the game. There’s no such thing as a king unless you earn it. You jump over enough blokes on yer way and yer a king. That speaks to me more than saying that one piece ‘ere or there is a pawn and can’t do nothin’ about it, ‘cept be fed to a slaughter. Besides all the philosophical reasons, it’s supposed to be a game, and games are supposed to be fun, and who ever ‘eard of anyone ‘aving fun playing chess? I ain’t ever seen none. You?”

“Can’t say that I have.”

“I always knew yer smart, even if you were a bobby.” Henry said. “So what’s yer business? Spill it. What do you want from me?”

“I thought we were playing checkers.”

“Okay, then. It’s yer funeral.” Henry retrieved a warped and chipped checkerboard from inside the humidor. He dropped the board in front of me and returned to the humidor for a bag of checkers. “Keeps the wood fresh.”

“Looks like it’s doing a bang up job to me,” I said.

“And I’m getting to not be fan of yer condescendin’ like tone. Smoke?”

“No thanks.”

“C’mon. One won’t kill ya.”

“I don’t smoke.”

“Then yer liable to be at a severe disadvantage in the game,” Henry said. “A good smoke’ll clear yer ‘ead. Now it’s even easier for me to out play ya.”

“I’ll take my chances,
” I said, as Henry poured the pieces onto the board and arranged them in front of us with the same touch humans give to their babies, cradling each piece until it fit perfectly in the center of each square. He did my side first, then his with the same precision. He stood up and waddled over to the fire. He stuck his face and his long cigar into the flame, immediately blocking the heat with the width of his frame. “I wouldn’t put my face that close to the flame just to smoke a compacted tube of dirt.”

“You see this?” Henry said, exhaling
a fresh puff of smoke with a laugh. “You see this ‘ere face? You can’t hurt this thing even if ya try. Least no flame could. If ya don’t believe me, I be willing to lift up this eye patch of mine to prove me point.”

“That won’t be necessary,” I said. “I have no doubt of nature not having the ability to do more damage to your face.”

“Always the mouth on you, Fritz.”

“What can I say, Henry? We have too much history for me to be anything less than honest with you. It comes from that bond created when one dog takes another dog off the streets when said dog has proven time and time again that he can’t handle the responsibilities that come with freedom.”

“You never proved nothing on me, Fritz. That’s why I’m still ‘ere.”

“Maybe. Either way, like I said, I’m not here for you. I couldn’t care less about your club or whatever racket you’re running from here.”

“That’s left to be seen,” Henry said.

“Why keep these pieces nice and clean and smooth just to subject them to this lousy board?”
             

“As long as yer pieces is clean and clear, you can win in any setting.”

“Sounds deep, Henry.”

“It is,” Henry said. “And just to correct ya, Fritz, my friend, your face is right up next to the flame. Yer move.”

“You know a dog named Clay?” I said, moving a corner piece out. Henry immediately responded by moving a center piece.

“Nope.”
             

“He’s a Rott. Big guy. Hangs around with a Jack Russell.”

“Never ‘eard of ‘im.”

“Never?”

“There an echo in ‘ere?” Henry said, having claimed most of the center of the board already.

“I thought you knew every dog that had an operation in Grand City?”

“What sorta operation you mean?”

“I don’t know yet. Something to do with the docks, but I guess you aren’t the big timer you once were. My mistake. I guess we don’t have to finish the game, do we?”

“Sit down, Fritz. Finish the game. It’s yer move. What’d you say that name was?”

“Clay. And I’m not saying it again. Either you’ve heard of him or you haven’t.”
I moved my back row out, bringing the corners out first.

“Oh yeah,” Henry said
, as he scored the first jump. “Sounds familiar now. I ‘aven’t met him yet. You say ‘e’s new in town?”

“I didn’t say anything other than his name, but yeah, I suspect he’s new to Grand City. If he’s been here long, he’s been off everyone’s radar.”

“What sorta of game is ‘e running out in the docks?”

“No idea,” I said, as
Henry ashed his cigar. The smell quickly got old. It smelled washed, yet ill, like a nursing home; a scent not intended for those with long-term plans.

“So you ‘ave no idea what sorta get up this, you said ‘is na
me’s Clay, did you?” Henry said, as I took a double jump. “But you know you want to go after this bloke… Ooh, I see it now.”

“This one is personal,
” I said, as Henry made a double jump on me and was a move away from getting kinged.

“I’m willing to bet that’s the reason you’re walking funny; at least funnier than the last time I saw you.”

“Something along those lines, Henry.”

“There’s no
something
about it. You want blood.”

“I don’t want blood. I have enough to suit me fine.”

“No you don’t. You forget that I’ve been around, maybe even longer than you ‘ave. I’ve seen enough dogs in my day who’ve buried the reasoning part of their brain out behind the shed with the ‘umans’ tools. I can tell you’ve been doing some digging, ‘aven’t you? Oh yeah. And you got that gleam in yer eye that tells me you ain’t gonna rest until you get yer revenge; and the revenge yer looking for won’t be quieted by Clay being yanked away into the back of a truck. The revenge you want, the revenge you need, can only get done by getting yer ‘ands dirty.”

“You don’t know a thing about me, Henry.”

“Yer a dog, ain’t ya? Then I know ya. Maybe you been around people so much that you think you be just like them? People can be wronged by someone or something and let it go. They can forget about it, but us, we dogs, no matter ‘ow much time you spend with people, yer still a dog. They might be talking to ya and communicating with ya, but at the end of the day, yer still taking orders from them. King me.”

“All I want is my fair shot.”

“There ain’t no such thing as a fair shot, Fritz. You should know that.”

“What about checkers? I thought you were all about fair shots.”

“That’s why they call it a game. It’s not real life. King me again. Told you a smoke would ‘elp you with that thinking cap.”

“Let me spill it out for you. Regardless of my intentions, I’ve seen dogs like Clay a million times before, and you have too. Grand City isn’t big enough for two dogs to have an operation like what you have here and whatever and wherever you may have elsewhere. It may not be today or tomorrow, but you know that Clay is going to one day see you as hindrance. I’d take care of it now. That’s one less problem you have looming down the line, so all I’m asking is that if you hear anything, feel free to pass it my way. If you don’t mind.”

“I ‘ave to tell ya, Fritz. I didn’t get to where I am today by ‘elping out the coppers. But I guess since you say you ain’t one anymore, then sure Fritz. If I ‘ear anything, you’ll be the first to know. Old times’ sake.”

“Thanks,” I said, ge
tting up to leave.

“Game’s not over, mate. You can’t leave.”

“You’re too good for me, Henry. Checkers isn’t my game.”

“Why didn’t you say so? We could’a played anything. Name it. Take a seat, the night’s young still. Have a drink with me. Come on, it’s not like yer on the clock no more. What’s yer game, Fritz?

“I don’t play games, Henry. You should know that by now.” I turned my back to Henry and walked out the same way I walked in.

“Like I said Fritz, that face of yers is right close to that flame.”

Several hours had passed since last call at Henry’s. The sun was hours away and we still hadn’t left South Side. The stench appeared gone. More likely, it simply permeated through us. We hunkered down in the corner of a nearby parking lot. Nipper fought to stay awake while laying on a flattened piece of cardboard. I sat alongside a dented, mid-sized sedan with a boot on the front driver’s side tire. Ernie was at the bottom of a nearby dumpster digging for scraps. I had no idea if anything was accomplished at Henry’s. And what were Nipper and Ernie doing out here with me? Why did I drag them out here with me?

What had I hoped to learn that I didn’t know already
? Clay was at the docks while I sat next to a junk pile. Why didn’t I just go to the docks and be done with it? I knew where to find him. I could’ve gotten the jump on him if I wanted to. Not that I would have done it that way. A fair fight was a fair fight even if my enemy didn’t share that sentiment. There was no honor in sneaking up on Clay. Revenge only counted when it was done face-to-face. Anything less than that and Clay still won.

All my conversation with Henry told me was that I’m a lousy checkers player. Even if he knew something, there was no way he was going to tell me, so what was that all about?

It was nice to feel like a cop again, but I knew it wasn’t real. I knew I was just getting a high, a quick fix. It wouldn’t be a high if I didn’t have a low to compare it to. That low is where I was when we left Henry’s. I wasn’t a pretend cop anymore. I was back to being just another dog sitting on his ass.

I picked up the scent of a cat who circled around us. He carried something warm and edible with him. I smelled a familiar cat panic from him, but it wasn’t the hostile panic scent you usually got from cats. This guy was anxious. He eyeballed me, but he wasn’t interested in attacking. He did not seem particularly frightened of me. That was curious. He was stupid if he wasn’t. 

He crept closer and slid between a few cars in a crisscrossing pattern. As he approached, he never broke his view even while batting his package in front of him. Nipper paid no attention and Ernie was distracted, talking to himself in the dumpster. I kept my ears low, my eyes opened and empty to signal that I was no threat to you, buddy.

“You’re fine,” I said. “Feel free to scoot on by. S
ay hi if you want to, because I’m not interested in sniffing beyond what I have already. Whatever you’ve brought with you, it’s all yours. The last thing I care about is an alley cat.”

“Huh?” Nipper said. The cat took his attention back and forth between me and Nipper.
“Is everything okay with you?”

“Not talking to you, Nipper.”

“You talking to me?” Ernie said.

“No.”

“Okay. We’re just in here getting some food. I’ll be out in a few minutes.”

We’re?
, I thought.

“If you gotta get somewhere,” I said
, to the cat, “don’t let us get in your way. You won’t get any trouble here.”

“You sure?” the cat said, as
he poked his head out from under a VW Bug with a complete set of flat tires. I nodded back at him. I can’t tell you what makes a cat good looking, but I can tell you what made one looks like a train wreck. It was this feline: clipped ear, skinny arms, and a few patches of fur that must’ve been on vacation. He sprung out from under the car, stayed low to the ground, and swung clear of me to leap up onto the rear end of the car I was leaning against. I was not happy with this cat taking the high ground on me. “Sorry, I have to go inside.”

He pushed his wad of what I had determined to be moldy string cheese into a hole in the car’s roof and followed it down. I stood and looked in the rear window and I dropped back down immediately. How I missed it, I don’t know. There was another cat huddled up the back seat and she was about to give birth to a few kittens in there.

I slowly rose my head back up so I could see in. Her back was to me, but the other cat could see me if he’d wanted to. He was busy tucking a towel in around her. They had a box down on the floorboard on its side, torn open to look like a bed with another small towel and some newspapers lined across it. The mother took heavy breaths and uncomfortably moaned. I caught myself being as still as possible. I didn’t want to breathe. She looked like she needed all the spare air that was available. 

I saw the total look of helplessness on the guy’s face. He wanted to help; he wanted to with every fiber of his being, but he couldn’t and he knew it. Made me think that the ordeal was tougher on him, which is a pretty ridiculous idea now that I say it. He could walk away if he wanted to. He could leap out of that backseat with a “sayonara.” She was the one who was stuck.

Then his face contorted and he looked uglier. She licked herself and the first kitten was out. It was little more than a tiny blob of fur with its eyes closed and its arms and legs tucked in. She licked herself again and he gently scooped up the kitten and placed it in the box, nudging it in the corner. It took its first quick little breaths. I felt like my presence surely violated a bond or something between these cats, but I couldn’t take my eyes away.

A second kitten came out, this one with a flash of different stripes of fur across its face. The father, he had to be the father, gently placed it next to its sibling in the box. A third one followed and the mother spent more time licking herself. This time the father didn’t bring the kitten over to the box. Instead, with none of the care he gave the first two, he picked up the kitten and jumped out of the car, down just a few feet from where I was. He looked startled when he saw me. I just looked at him.

“What are you doing?” I said.

“This guy didn’t make it,” he said. “I’m sorry, please excuse me.”

He set the limp kitten down behind the rear tire and went back inside the car. I examined the kitten. No signs of life; no movement, no breathing, nothing. Something about that image wasn’t right. This was an impossible scene. If it was real and this little cat was born dead, then what was the point of any of this? Why this one? Who decided that it got no shot at living a life? I wasn’t convinced. It made no sense for there to be a slippery lifeless body lying right in front of me and I’m supposed to accept that there’s nothing there and that nothing ever was there? I knew that it did not work that way. I nudged him and rubbed his head with the dry part of my nose.

“Come on,” I whispered. I could feel him cooling off, so I exhaled warm air up and down his tiny body, trying to compete with the twilight morning cold. I blew on his head and face and nudged him harder. Then it coughed. It coughed again! Another, and then he gurgled for breath. His throat convulsed and tried to open. I rolled him over, but no luck. I took a deep breath, loosened and relaxed my jaw as much I could, and picked him up. I kept his face pointed down, and shook him hard enough to dislodge the fluid. Who knew a few drops of phlegm could be so vicious?
He was breathing and crying. He would be okay at least for that moment.

I felt the little guy relax as I sat him down away from the tire out in the open. He lay on his side while I watched him for a moment. A single moment in time and it was just me and this little fella. This cat who would probably grow up to be a real pain in the ass, or
he might get lucky and find somewhere warm to live, but I didn’t waste my moment thinking about that.

Did I save his life? Maybe. I gave him a hand when he needed it. That was my job. That was good enough. Hopefully, he doesn’t remember th
ose harsh few minutes that began his life. Fortunately, I won’t forget them. He’ll never know I existed. If I hadn’t been procrastinating alongside some junk car in South Side, he’d have found his end underneath the broken rear axle of said junk car. How’s that for not making any sense?

I looked back into the car. The two kittens nibbled on the string cheese and mom tended to herself. I looked at the dad and gestured towards the hole in the roof. He looked confused so I gestured again with my best
get your scrawny butt out here or otherwise I’m coming in and you don’t want that
look.

“Umm, hi,” he said, as h
e jumped down and kept his distance.

“You forgot someone,” I said.

“I told you, he didn’t… Oh my!”

He grabbed the kitten with the tenderness he should’ve given
him to begin with and brought him back inside. He placed him next to the mother, who started nursing it.

“Thank you,” the father said, poking his head
out of the hole in the car.

“Don’t be so quick to give up on someone,” I said.

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not the one you need to apologize to.”

“Okay. Hey, ummm, you don’t have to if you don’t want to, but I feel like if you want to give him a name, you probably should have the first shot at it.”

“I’ve never named anyone before,
” I said, looking inside at the two kittens huddled together on the newspaper, the comics section. “Ziggy. Call him Ziggy.”

“Okay. Thanks again.”

He disappeared and I left them alone. For all I know, it’ll turn out to be a fitting name. Maybe it won’t. I went over and sat by Nipper.

“Something going on over there?” Nipper
said, yawning.

“
It’s nothing,” I said. “Hey Ernie, did you say ‘we’ a few minutes ago?”

“Yeah,” Ernie said.

“What’re you doing?” Nipper said.

“Getting food. While you two were napping, I was starving again. There’s plenty of good
grub in here. If you want some, you better get in here while the getting is good. Me and my new friend here have about eaten all the good stuff.”

“Who are you in there with?” I said.

“Don’t know his name. He’s busy eating. Oh, I almost forgot, Knox and Gash told me about Clay.”

“What?” I said. “They did? How do you forget something like that?”

“Yeah. I don’t know. Seems like they knew him pretty good. No one else would talk about him, but Knox said he’s always at the cat races and always bets big in the tenth and cleans up huge.”

“That’s it?” I said.

“Well, yeah. They wanted to know why I was asking so many questions when I just asked if they’d heard of him, so that was it. Those are dogs you don’t push the issue with. I’m not stupid. Oh no-” Sirens suddenly engulfed us. Did they find us? How? Did someone from Henry’s rat on us? Who would they have ratted to? I couldn’t go back now. “How did you deal with the noise of that for so long? It hurts so bad it’s making me angry.”

“Don’t move,” I said. “Stop making noise.”

A quartet of Grand City squad cars pulled up to an apartment complex near the lot. Footsteps pounded the pavement surrounding us. If they got closer, our cover wouldn’t hold. And there was Nitro. He was let out of the second to last car. No sooner did his paws hit the concrete that he spun and saw me.

“Wh
at is it?” Nitro’s partner said, releasing Nitro to investigate. Nitro ran over and stayed on the other side of a nearby minivan. He pretended to examine the car.

“Well, well, well,” Nitro said. “You never know who you’ll run into on the job. Don’t worry, I won’t bring the rest of the boys over here, but it does make me wonder what you’re doing at this hour out in South Side?”

“Leave me alone, Nitro,” I said. “You should probably be working.”

“I
am
working. Unlike you.”

“I’m not doing anything,” I said. “Why don’t you get back to the call?”

“Who’s your friend?” Nitro said.

“We’re working a case,” Ernie said
, from inside the dumpster. “Tell them to shut that siren off. We get it, you’re here.”

“What? Who? You know what, Fritz, I don’t even want to know what’s going on
with you.”

“Good,” I said.

“But humor me this,” Nitro said, “what kind of case are you working on? Is someone stealing bones from the convalescent pound’s holiday party fund?”

“There’s that humor I’ve missed so much,” I said.

“We’re chasing criminals,” Ernie said.

“If whoever you are in the trash wants to keep talking, you better show yourself.”

“You know anything about that dog, Clay?” I said. “If you do, you could help me.”

“Why would I want to do that?” Nitro said. “What? He’s someone you want to bring in? You’re a piece of work, you know that? You gotta let it go, Fritz. This isn’t healthy, this obsession you have going on. At first, I thought it was part of the grieving process or whatever you want to call it, but you sound like one o
f those conspiracy nuts who say they only use one dog for the same character on a TV show. And you know as well as I do that any information on a pending case isn’t just handed out to any Fido Q. Citizen. So, sorry, I can’t help you.” Nitro’s partner yelled out at him and whistled. “Back to work. I’ll be seeing you, and by that, I mean, hopefully never again, you dig?”

“Yeah, I dig.”

After a few minutes, the squad cars cleared the scene. Ernie got out of the dumpster and said bye to his dining companion. I felt comfortable sitting there in a parking lot in South Side. That’s how I knew it was time to leave. The three of us wandered off into what was left of the night.