Cormac: The Tale of a Dog Gone Missing (13 page)

“Tara? This is Lou Lafitte. I know you, and you know me,” he said into the phone. “You had my friend’s dog down there. Now you’re about to have me down there looking for answers. I’ll be there in five minutes. Clear your calendar.”

Lou started the truck’s engine and sped away from the curb.

“Don’t spill Jenny,” I warned.

“You couldn’t dynamite that leopard dog out of the bed of this truck,” Lou said. “Besides, her collar’s leashed to the floor back there. She can range to the side bed, but no farther. It’s a good system that everybody’s dog in an open pickup should have.”

“I know,” I said. “Belle told me all about it.”

Lou didn’t exceed the speed limit, but I had the sensation of traveling at the speed of light. Lou said little. I said nothing. Once I started to tell Lou that Todd Coverdale said don’t go to the pound, but let it go. When we got there I would let Lou do all the talking.

Fifteen minutes later we pulled into the gravel parking lot of the pound. Lou was out the truck door while it still rocked from the drive and the motor still coughed. He didn’t wait for me. He did, however, pat Jenny and tell her to stay. I debated staying put, to heed my lawyer’s advice, a debate that ended in ten seconds. The door was ajar to Tara Mitchell’s office. When I walked in, I heard, “…what it feels like to read about yourself on the front pages of America’s daily newspapers. I know just about all the editors, Tara, from Chicago and San Francisco to New York and Atlanta.” I stepped into her office. The woman he addressed displayed none of the authority she had wielded so freely on the phone with me. She was pretty, dressed in tight khaki pants, with her brown hair in a ponytail. While she did not by any means cower from Lou, neither did she oppose him.

He barreled ahead. “Not one of those editors would turn down a story about a man and his dog. Especially when that man acknowledged his dog at the front of his novel and lost his dog while touring that very book.” Tara Mitchell looked at me, then back at Lou, whose big chest swelled when he pulled in a breath. “You’ve got sixty seconds to tell me about the Golden Retriever you had in your cages. I’m not threatening you, cher, just telling you what a nightmare it’ll be for you to field questions from CNN rookie reporters. You don’t want to know how bad a newsman’s breath smells when he starts panting to make a name for himself.” If Tara had some reply, she didn’t have a chance to give it as Lou trundled onward.

“You don’t know slime, Tara, ’til you’ve been slimed by snakes ready to swallow you whole in the name of free press. You screwed up in your job at the dog pound, or at a New Year’s Eve party. Once or six times. You do not want those mistakes indexed on your own TV program listings. But I’ll make sure that’s what happens.”

Lou huffed another deep breath. “Now you’ve got ten seconds.”

I blinked like a man caught in a dust storm, trying to block the tears. My breathing had moved so high in my lungs I felt I might suffocate. And when Lou snatched a pen from his shirt pocket, my heart jacked in my chest like an air chisel hammering through concrete and rebar. He scribbled onto one of the note pads on the counter.

“And maybe you’ve got a green collar somewhere in this rat’s nest on your desk. I’ll be taking it with me when I go.” Lou had forgotten to return my cell phone to me, and noticing its bulge in his shirt pocket, he fished it out and tossed it to me. He fixed his eyes on me, rage still smoldering the coal-black shine of them.

Tara Mitchell bent over her desk, found a pen, and wrote something down on a pad. She tore off the sheet of paper. “This is the name of the man who picked up the Golden last Monday. This is his cell number.”

Lou handed the piece of paper to me. “This is your call to make, friend,” he said. He looked back at Tara Mitchell. “If he crawfishes, he’ll get the same deal I offered you. Call him when we step out of your office, Tara. Promise him that Lou Lafitte will deliver.” He smacked his big palm down on the desk, startling the woman and me. “Now, photocopies of the paperwork on the Golden Retriever and the collar.” He turned his face to me. “You’ll know your collar, right?”

“Absolutely,” I said.

“I don’t have it,” Tara Mitchell said. “I’ll make copies for you, but the collar’s been missing from my office since the day after the Golden was taken.” She opened a file drawer and took out papers, made copies and handed them to Lou.

“I’m going to take Mr. Brewer back to Fairhope, Tara. I’ll be back down here in one hour. Maybe before I get back you’ll find the collar,” the big man said, and stalked toward the door. He stopped still in his tracks when he realized I was rooted to the floor. Lou turned, walked back to me, and bent to wrap his arms around me.

“Maybe your dog ain’t gone for much longer,” he said, like a grandfather would say to a grandson needing a boost of confidence. I tossed in the towel at that point, and shed some tears as manly as I could, my head up, my shoulders square, my face pretty quickly turning into a wet mess. He stood back nodding, my eyes caught in his. “Not to worry,” Lou said, and we headed for the door. Tara Mitchell actually stepped forward as I passed and gave me a light tap on the shoulder.

When we got to his truck, Lou took a minute to talk to his dog. Most of Jenny’s tail-thrashing, wiggling excitement had shifted to an interest in me, whether I was friend or foe. Lou opened his door. He reached under the driver’s seat and tossed me an oily rag. I wiped my eyes and blew my nose.

“Keep it,” he said. “I’ve got more at home.”

PIERRE INVITED ME to take the cordless phone back into the kitchen. “For privacy,” he said. I knew that he also intended that I leave any customers who might stop by out of this. I think he feared I might get cranked up the way I told him Lou had at the dog pound. I feared he was right.

“You know,” I said to Pierre as I took the phone from him, “it dawns on me that the papers show this dog was handed off on the 21st of March. If it turns out it’s Cormac, that day would have been his fourth birthday. What a sorry sense of humor on the part of the Great Spirit of All Dogs.”

“Unless you count that the dog pound didn’t kill him on his tenth day in the pokey,” Pierre added. That stopped me. I felt a shiver with goose bumps following. I stood holding the phone, staring at it as though some oracular voice would crackle from it and offer me a navigational fix in the heavens, some bright star to give me a reference point in this weird, loopy course I stumbled along.

“You’re right,” I said, my voice low. “You know, Pierre, how I claim nine as my lucky number?” He nodded. “When I thought about this birthday coincidence I added together the string of numbers in the date of Cormac’s birthday: 3-21-2001. It comes to nine. Maybe there is some luck running here. And, maybe, just maybe, this man I’m about to call will help me sort out some things.”

“If you get lucky, it’ll be because you’ve worked hard for it,” Pierre said. “I don’t have a dog. But if I did, and if he ran away, I’m thinking I’d say something like, ‘Fido was a good old dog.’ And that would be that. Your dog thing is different. You’re earning every drop of luck you get.”

“And you and Lou are helping me,” I said.

“That’s because we are your friends,” Pierre said.

“Well, I’m grateful. You know that, I hope,” I said. Pierre waved off my remark, and said nothing. I held up the papers. “Something else here that’s mighty interesting. Suspicious, even,” I said.

“What?”

“The dog’s name on this paperwork is Cognac,” I said. “That sounds a lot like Cormac, don’t you think?”

“Now that’s a lot weirder to me than that hooha about the numbers,” Pierre said. “No way that’s coincidental.”

“I think you’re right,” I said. “Makes me more confident it’s my dog I’m chasing here.”

I closed the door into the tiny kitchen, held up the scrap of notepaper that I’d involuntarily crumpled in my left hand. I unwadded it and put it on the counter beside the coffee pot. I looked around for a stool, but decided instead to stand. Stand and deliver, I thought. I took a long, slow breath, and keyed in the number for a Mr. Clyde Grossett. He answered on the second ring.

“Hello, Mr. Grossett.”

“Yes.”

“My name is Sonny Brewer from Fairhope.”

“Yes. So, how may I help you, Mr. Brewer?”

“You took a Golden Retriever from the dog pound last Monday.” My pulse was already beginning to race as my heart kicked into fight-or-flight mode. I had zero control of it.

“Ah, yes,” he said, his voice telling me that Clyde Grossett was proceeding with caution.

“I have reason to believe that was my dog,” I said. “I lost my Golden about two weeks ago. I’d like to come look at him. May I?”

“Well, Mr. Brewer, I’m afraid that’s not possible. He is not with me.”

“Where is he?”

“I’m not able to provide that information, sir.”

“Why the hell not?” I asked, trying to speak from the same platform of authority occupied only minutes ago by my friend Lou Lafitte. Only thing, my balance seemed questionable and I felt a wobble underneath me. Lou had stood tall and wide, like a pirate captain aboard his flagship.

“Let’s keep this civil, Mr. Brewer. I am a member of a Golden Retriever rescue network. That dog was processed and interfaced with the system. He is no longer local.”

“Processed? Interfaced? No longer local?” I was livid. I shouted into the phone, “What are you even talking about? Just tell me what you did with the dog you picked up.” Pierre walked into the kitchen, stood just inside the open door looking at me. His face was flat, serious. My hand shook.

“I’ve already told you, sir. I don’t have the information you seek,” said the thin voice on the phone. “And I am about to terminate this call. But should I continue this dialogue, Mr. Brewer, I would have serious questions for you about why you lost him in the first place. Why are you only now taking this up? By your own admission it has been more than two weeks—”

Pierre snatched the phone from my hand. “Excuse me, Mr.—” Pierre’s eyes found the piece of notepaper with the name and phone number on it. He touched it with his index finger. “Mr. Grossett. I am Pierre Fouchere, an associate of Sonny Brewer. Tara Mitchell at first refused to share your contact information with us. She changed her mind. The reason she changed her mind is the same reason you will change your mind. You have three minutes to call Tara Mitchell and return this call to me.” Pierre held the handset at arm’s length, and with a swirl and flourish, punched the button to end the call.

“Now, we are three. Musketeers, we! On a mission to save Fido.” Pierre sang. He plucked a butter knife from the dish drain, and carved big curving figures in the air in front of my face. He spun and with a faltering war cry drove the butter knife into a loaf of bread still inside its plastic sleeve, which served to prevent the blunt knife from actually piercing the wrapper, more or less mashing the loaf instead. Pierre dropped his weapon and delivered a crushing karate chop, completely smushing the bread. I cannot judge whether it was the comedic content of Pierre’s routine, or the desperation choking me like a python, or some combination of both, but I doubled over in delirium and laughed so hard it seemed to frighten Pierre. As though something in me had snapped.

I was still laughing when the phone rang.

Pierre snapped to attention like a soldier surprised by a general, quickly putting his finger to his lips, shushing me loudly, which also blew out the flame of humor we’d kindled. I stood up straight. Pierre answered the phone.

“Pierre Fouchere.” He kept his eyes on me as he listened into the phone. “Hold on, I’ll ask you to repeat that.” Pierre asked me to write some things down. I took out my moleskin journal and opened it to a clean page. I told him to go ahead.

“Boulevard Animal Clinic in Mobile,” Pierre repeated, and called out a phone number. I took dictation. “Golden Love in Danbury, Connecticut,” he continued, and called out another phone number. Pierre listened for another minute, and then said, “You saved yourself a great deal of trouble, Mr. Grossett. And here’s some advice: rewrite your rescue mission statement, pal, and add a first line in all caps about making an effort to reunite pets with owners. If I need anything else, I’ll call.”

Pierre stood, silent, shaking his head. “It’s a Golden Retriever pipeline,” he said, and told me that Clyde Grossett had picked up the dog Tiffany Hale told me about, and had taken him to Mobile to a veterinarian clinic where his processing amounted to a checkup, shots, and neutering.

“And, then, because of some, what, supply agreement with a Golden Retriever outfit in Connecticut, shipped him there for adoption.” Pierre said he couldn’t figure that one out. “Grossett said you’d find out that the dog he ‘put through’ was too young to be yours,” he said. I’d told Tara Mitchell my dog was four.

“Was the dog carrying a license?” I asked, my anger still simmering. “How do they know how old it was?”

“You’ve got to get to the bottom of this, Sonny,” Pierre said.

“At the bottom of this is getting my dog back. That’s all,” I said. “I’ve got no interest in some kind of suburban intrigue swirling around ‘the woman in the red truck’ or even knowing one more thing about this goofy Grossett and whatever deal he might have with the dog pound.”

“Well, I do!” Pierre said. “And Lou does. We’ll be your Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. Sounds like these rescuers might rescue a dog from the edge of its own yard.”

“You two go for it. And keep me posted,” I said. “I just want Cormac back home.” I told Pierre I wanted to take this one step at a time, with one goal in mind: find Cormac. And that the next step was a phone call to this Boulevard Animal Clinic, then Golden Love, a Golden Retriever ‘adoption’ agency in Connecticut.

“Okay,” Pierre said, “let me leave you to your work.”

What I learned at the clinic was pretty clinical, that they performed routine exams on “rescues” for a number of organizations, that they gave shots, neutered, and spayed. When I asked about the specific Golden Retriever they had on March 21, one week ago, they put me on hold, found the paperwork, then read to me from his chart, tellling me the dog was called Cognac. I had this flash that if this was Cormac, then there was at least some measure of familiarity for him in the name by which he was being called. It wasn’t much, but it gave me a bit of a lift.