Isle of Dogs (17 page)

He fell silent, deeply saddened by the thought of the poor woman never realizing her dream and then wishing she were Trooper Truth, and now she was dead.

“So do you think she met the killer and talked to him?” Hammer supposed. “Maybe she told him the same quirky anecdote about people teasing her about Trooper Truth and that she wished she was Trooper Truth, and she then trusted this stranger enough to go off with him somewhere?”

“That’s exactly what I think, but I’m hesitating on the gender issue. Other tips I’ve gotten indicated T. T. wasn’t likely to go off with a man and certainly wouldn’t let one pick her up unless it was at work, where she lived a lie because she feared repercussions from her bigoted boss. So her M.O. was to dress rather tough and hang out in bars on nights and weekends, looking for same-sex company. She apparently called a
friend the night of her death and said she was going to Tobacco Company, which is a very nice place and not the sort of hangout where you’d expect whacko people. So I’m assuming whoever T. T. met, it wasn’t anyone people would notice or not trust. Not that I’m saying she met anyone in Tobacco Company. We don’t know where she met her killer, not yet. I—through Trooper Truth—have been forwarding all this information to Detective Slipper, by the way. So hopefully he’s following up on it.”

“But what none of this begins to explain is why the killer left evidence at your house, Andy,” Hammer said, her face tense with fear. “I’m worried about your safety, for God’s sake! This is a vicious psychopath and now he’s stalking you!”

“Frankly,” Andy said, “I’m not convinced that the killer is a man or is working alone. Let me remind you that Moses Custer was also cut with a razorlike weapon.”

“A woman highway pirate who is committing hate crimes?” Hammer asked dubiously.

“It’s such a ridiculous misnomer for people to assume that women aren’t violent and capable of the same awful things men do,” Andy replied. “Hate is hate. And I think it might be a good plan for me to address that in Trooper Truth soon.”

C
AT
was unfolding his own plan while this steamy conversation was going on miles away on the other side of the James River. The road dog had borrowed the Land Cruiser, which this minute was parked at the state police hangar, inconspicuously tucked between two other civilian cars. After hours of waiting, Cat was finally rewarded when Macovich appeared in the sky and landed the 430 that he had just flown to Tangier Island to pick up fresh seafood.

Macovich had to admit that those Tangierians were the strangest people on earth. Although they had declared war on Virginia and were flying a flag with a crab on it, the instant they realized Macovich had shown up for the single-minded purpose of buying something, they took down the crab flag
and hoisted the Virginia flag. Then they doubled the price for the governor’s dinner.

“I don’t guess you know anything about that dentist you got hid somewhere on this island.” Macovich had at least made an attempt to investigate the kidnapping while the lady at the cash register gave him change in pennies.

“The dentist? I haven’t seen him of lately,” the woman replied. Macovich didn’t believe her and couldn’t help but notice that she had the worst crowns he had ever seen.

“He cap your teeth?” Macovich asked.

“Yass.” The Tangier woman, whose name was Mattie Dize, flashed Macovich a snow-white, chalky smile as he pocketed ninety-two pennies.

“Wooo,” Macovich replied, shaking his head. “Glad he ain’t my dentist. Now, listen here. I think it would be smart if you folks out here calmed down and let that dentist go on home to his family. What good is it doing to be hiding him somewhere? The rest of Virginia don’t want no trouble with you Tangierians.”

Mattie’s eyes narrowed and she sucked in her bottom lip as she smacked the cash drawer shut.

“The gov’ner don’t want no hassle with you folks, either,” Macovich continued as blue crabs clattered and a trout flopped in the bottom of the white plastic bucket. “I mean, I could just start breaking down doors until I found the dentist and then lock up every last one of you, but I’m being nice about it. And ’sides, I need to get this seafood on back to the gov’ner before it dies ’cause the First Lady don’t like dead fresh seafood.”

Macovich had at least tried to mediate, he thought as he shut down the helicopter back at the hangar and noticed a hard-looking youth who was dressed like a member of a NASCAR pit crew and talking on a cell phone.

“He’s here,” Cat was telling Smoke.

“Who is? It’d better be good, you waking me up in the middle of the afternoon.”

“That big black mother cop. He just landed in the chopper.”

“No shit?” Smoke was instantly alert. “Well, just get your ass over there and take that lesson, and why isn’t Possum there instead of you?”

“He working on something in his room,” Cat said.

“I’m going to kick his ass,” Smoke groggily said as he rolled over and went back to sleep.

Cat casually strutted toward the helicopter Macovich was refueling with a big hose attached to an Exxon truck with
JET-A
in large letters on it. Cat buttoned up his NASCAR windbreaker and pulled a NASCAR cap low over his eyes, grateful he had gone to every race at the Richmond International Raceway and had already been well supplied with NASCAR memorabilia—such as clothing, cigarette lighters, posters, mugs, pens, and air fresheners for the rearview mirror—long before he knew these items might be important to his work.

Macovich watched the NASCAR man walking toward him and got excited. What he wouldn’t give to be part of a NASCAR pit crew! This guy looked like the right stuff: swaggering, rough, strong but small enough to fit inside a stock car. He was smoking a Winston and wearing dark glasses and probably had a beautiful, sexy blonde waiting for him at home.

“I’m here on orders of my driver, whose name you still can’t know,” Cat said, flipping open a colorful lighter with
Winston Cup
and Jeff Burton’s signature on it. “Let’s get started.”

“Get started doin’ what?” Macovich eyed the lighter with envy and wondered if the white driver with dreadlocks he met last night might be Jeff Burton in disguise.

“Teaching me to fly.” Cat fondled the lighter and took his time firing it up, a cigarette tucked behind his ear.

Macovich looked around to see if anyone was watching. Cat slipped a hundred-dollar bill out of a zippered pocket on the windbreaker’s sleeve. Macovich stared at the bill and tried to remember the last time he had seen one.

“I tell you what,” he said to Cat. “Let me drop off this fresh seafood first. Meet me back here in an hour or two.”

“Wait a fucking minute,” Cat said, alarmed. “I ain’t taking no lesson in the dark!”

“You crazy, man?” Macovich talked rough with him. “You think a big helicopter like this cares if it’s dark? This baby’s instrument rated, got autopilot, a traffic scope plus a storm scope, and all kinds of landing lights, and even a DVD player
in the back so the First Family can watch movies while I haul them around.”

Cat understood the DVD part but nothing else. He was beginning to think he had taken on far more than he could handle, but he wasn’t about to let this big mother cop think that.

“Oh yeah?” Cat said. “Well, I seen bigger, better helicopters than this one. What’chu think all them drivers land in at the racetrack?”

“Mostly Jet Rangers and maybe a 407,” replied Macovich, who knew firsthand what landed at the racetrack because the First Family was quite fond of stock cars that thunder around and around in circles all night long. “Now I gotta deliver this seafood before it’s dead,” Macovich said. “I’ll be right back and let you get by with paying me only a hundred dollar for your first lesson, as sort of a courtesy. But it gonna cost you more after that. This is a ’spensive machine.”

“How much it worth on the street?” Cat eagerly asked.

“ ’Bout six mil,” Macovich said as he locked the helicopter’s doors and baggage compartment.

P
OSSUM
wasn’t allowed to have a lock on his bedroom door, but he could surely use one, he thought, as he worried that Smoke was going to be pissed off when he found out that Possum had wormed his way out of the helicopter lesson. Possum nervously ate a peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich in his dark bedroom as he continued to sketch out ideas for a pirate flag while he watched
Bonanza
and petted Popeye.

“Wish I could do that,” he muttered to Popeye as Hoss, who was out by the barn, bent horseshoes with his bare hands.

Little Joe was whipping Hoss in shape to wrestle the infamous Bear Cat Sampson at the Tweedy Circus that had just come to town. All Hoss had to do was pin the undefeated circus wrestler in five minutes, and Hoss and Little Joe would win a hundred dollars. That was probably a lot of money back then, Possum thought. These days, a hundred dollars would barely buy a decent pair of basketball shoes.

Possum sketched a bent horseshoe in his theme book and scratched through it. Then he tried drawing Hoss lifting a wagon full of heavy feed sacks. Next, Little Joe was
slamming a board into Hoss’s big belly, and Hoss couldn’t even feel it. None of these themes worked on paper, either. So Possum tried his hand at the Ponderosa map burning up, and he felt he was at least on the right track.

His door flew open and Smoke was standing there glaring at him. Possum squinted in the sudden light seeping into his room.

“What the fuck you doing?” Smoke said angrily, as if he might just snatch Possum and Popeye off the bed and hurt both of them.

“Nothing.”

“Why didn’t you go to the hangar? I get a call from Cat while your lazy ass is back here watching TV! You were supposed to take the lesson, not Cat!”

“Cat be better at flying than me,” Possum meekly replied. “You was asleep, Smoke, so we didn’t want to bother you ’bout it.”

“Well, get your ugly ass up. We’re going to Wal-Mart to get some NASCAR clothes. From now on, that’s our colors and don’t let me catch you wearing no more Michael Jordan shit. We’re going to the race,” Smoke went on. “There’s one in town Saturday night, the Winston Series.”

“But we ain’t got tickets!” Possum exclaimed. “How we get in this late with no tickets? And there won’t be no place to park the car.”

“We don’t need tickets or a place to park,” Smoke said, walking out of the bedroom and slamming the door shut.

Hoss entered the ring and was sucker-punched a few times before he locked Bear Cat in a bear hug and broke the wrestler’s ribs.

“Let go of him, let go of him!” Possum whispered, even though he had seen this rerun so many times he knew that Hoss wouldn’t let go of Bear Cat before time was up, and Hoss and Little Joe would lose the hundred dollars and end up traveling with the circus until Bear Cat healed up enough to wrestle again. “Let him go, Hoss!”

Ben Cartwright and Little Joe cheered from the stands, and Possum started sketching again. NASCAR had given him an idea. Like pirates, NASCAR used all kinds of flags for different warnings and penalties. Possum drew a checkered flag and
turned it into a Jolly Roger, coloring the skull and crossbones red.

“Shit,” he muttered. “That don’t work neither, Popeye.”

He turned a checkered flag into a game of tic-tac-toe and still wasn’t satisfied, so he drew a black flag that meant it was time to pull into the pits, and he felt a chill creep up to the roots of his hair. He was getting somewhere. Possum erased areas of the black, forming white eyes and a grinning mouth that gave the morbid impression of a smiley-face skull. He crossed the skull with two possum tails instead of bones, and clamped a lit cigarette between the teeth, smoke rising in swirls. A smoking skull, he thought, getting increasingly excited as the Tweedy Circus ran out of money and had to pay Hoss and Little Joe with an elephant that they closed up inside the Ponderosa barn. Ben Cartwright wasn’t happy when he opened the barn door and discovered his new livestock.

Possum sadly thought of the late Dale Earnhardt’s number 3 black GM Goodwrench Services Chevy, and decided to honor the dead racing hero.
Jolly Goodwrench,
Possum wrote in block letters beneath the smoking skull flag.

“Hey look!” he exclaimed as he ran inside Smoke’s bedroom and held up his theme book.

“You come in here one more time without asking and I’ll blow your tiny dick off!” Smoke yelled as he sat up in bed and lit a cigarette.

“We got us a pirate flag, Smoke,” Possum explained. “I can make one that look just like this and we can fly it at the race and make people think it’s our NASCAR flag. We can take Popeye, too, and make sure them two cops show up, right? They never suspect no pit crew might be carrying pieces and are gonna blow their asses away. Then Cat can show up with the helicopter and fly us outta there and nobody can catch us. Then maybe we can ’scape to Tangerine Island, since everybody there’s already in trouble and we could hide out with them ’til things chill, you know?”

Smoke sucked on the cigarette and shook several nearby beer cans. All of them were empty.

“Go get me a beer,” he said to Possum. “Make sure that fucking flag’s finished by Saturday. And get Cat on the cell phone and tell him to make sure we got that helicopter for
Saturday. Tell him to tell that big black momma that the famous driver and his pit crew are gonna need it to get to the race and then afterwards to be dropped off at a big party on an island. Once we get there, we shoot that cop, too, and the helicopter’s ours, and we got it fucking made in the shade.”