Working Stiff
Page 17
The werewolf cop’s mood hadn’t improved since he reported his stolen hellhound. On the way over to his house, I thought Harry might regale me with his exploits as a tough vigilante officer with a sixth sense for sniffing out guilt and “Jack Bauering” a confession out of a quivering suspect. What I’d heard through the rumor mill was surely exaggerated, but as I rode beside the feral, furry werewolf, I could imagine it wouldn’t take much to nudge him into violence.
We went up the front walk, and he used a set of keys to work the locks on his front door—four deadbolts, as well as the lock on the regular knob. “Can’t be too secure.”
I noticed the large BEWARE OF DOG sign on the garage door, another one taped in the front window, and a third one on a stake pounded into the lawn.
“I made a lot of enemies when I was a cop, plenty of punks gunning for me with silver bullets. I’ve kept a low profile for years—I’m done with law enforcement. But a lot of the creeps I put away are just getting out on parole. Damn pussy liberal justice system! They should’ve all been fried in the electric chair, just because.”
Instinctively, I avoided talking about politics or judicial leniency with him, although Robin would have jumped into the debate.
He swung open the thoroughly unlocked door and marched inside, letting me follow. Inside the dim house I could smell the musky scent of damp fur—either Lucky the hellhound, or maybe it was just an old werewolf smell. As he entered the front hall, Harry’s shoulders sagged. “I always expect Lucky to come barking and yipping and slobbering all over me, but now the house just feels empty.”
I could sense the obvious weight of guilt in Hairy Harry. I doubted he felt bad about all the criminals he’d put away, most of whom had confessed (though many were scarred for life after the experience). “Nice house, Mr. Harry,” I said. I feel it’s often good to start an investigation with an inane comment.
“It’s just Hairy. I stopped being a Mister when I stopped being a cop … after I lost my partner.” Shuddering, he hung his head, and his tongue lolled out.
I wanted to ask him about the tragedy, but Hairy wasn’t a warm and fuzzy sort of guy. More like prickly fuzzy.
On the mantel in the living room, I saw a large spiked dog collar as big as a basketball hoop. The bristling points were each as long as a sacrificial dagger, and a shamrock nametag dangled from the center. “Is that Lucky’s collar?”
“Wow, your detective skills are impressive,” he said with a sarcastic edge in his voice.
Trying to imagine the size of the beast based on the diameter of the collar, I thought the New Deadwood Saloon had gotten lucky, and I said as much. The werewolf growled again and slumped in a tattered plaid reclining chair. “I used to drink at that saloon, me and my partner, Amy … though she wasn’t old enough to drink. Mild Bill carries good sarsaparilla. Amy really liked it.” His claws dug into the fabric arms of the recliner. “But that’s all behind me now. I’m just a retired guy who wants a quiet life. Can’t a man sit at home with his dog, do the crossword puzzle, watch the shopping channels and laugh at the stupid stuff people buy?”
“Did you have a routine with your hellhound? Did you take him to a dog park, walk him down the street where other people might have seen him?”
“Everybody loved Lucky and he loved everybody—didn’t make him a very good guard dog, I suppose. I had an appointment to take him to the vet for some minor surgery, but now he’s out there, all alone.” His claws shredded the arms of the chair. “And I’m all alone. I need Lucky! I got him after … after what happened to Amy. I don’t know what I’d do without my dog.”
“What happened to your partner?” I asked, then quickly added, “just in case it has something to do with your missing hellhound.”
“I was three days from retirement when it happened,” Hairy said with a distant look in his yellow eyes. “And Amy was a perky human rookie, almost to her twenty-first birthday, and she’d just gotten engaged to be married. Had everything to live for … until we got into a bad patch, and I failed her.”
He snapped his jaws shut, and he turned to glower at me. “That’s got nothing to do with Lucky!” He sprang out of his reclining chair. “Let me show you his back doggy door.” He strode through the kitchen to the back door, half of which had been replaced with a hinged trap door for a large dog to exit into the fenced yard. The doggy-door hinges had been removed, though, and the panel hung askew.
“What were you doing when Lucky went missing?” I asked.
“I was asleep in my reclining chair, self-medicated with a fifth of bourbon. It’s the only way I can chase the demons away, the only way I can sleep. But when Lucky’s here, I feel safe—and now I’m not safe. In a world where a hellhound guard dog can get stolen, how can anyone ever feel safe?”
On creaking knees, I bent down to look at the hinges, saw what looked like a smudge of tiny fingers near where the swinging door had been detached. I looked outside in the back yard, saw the four-foot-high chain-link fence that could never contain a large hellhound. “So, Lucky was well trained then?”
“Such a good dog.” Harry slid the hanging trapdoor aside. “Some bastards slipped in and stole my Lucky.” Rage seemed to boil out of him, and he slashed the air with his claws, but then he deflated. “Find him for me, Mr. Shamble. Before it’s too late.” He led me back to the front door. “I just might go rogue again.”
I remembered the posters in the UQPD: the bristling werewolf cop with his enormous .44 Magnum filled with silver bullets. For the dognapper’s sake, I had to keep Hairy Harry from becoming a vigilante.
I started formulating a plan in my mind. I would check the animal shelter just in case someone had brought in a stray hellhound, and the veterinary clinic where Lucky had been scheduled for surgery. Sheyenne could print up LOST HELLHOUND flyers and post them all around the Quarter.
As we stepped onto the porch, though, the werewolf snarled. I saw three figures two feet tall scuttling out of the shrubbery and dashing across the grass. Gremlins. Deceptively cute and innocuous-looking critters, not quite the same as the “don’t feed after midnight” variety. These were landbound, not the type to sabotage airplane engines, although gremlins had been known to wreak havoc on unattended lawnmowers.
Hairy Harry bared his fangs and roared. “Get off my lawn!” The gremlins scuttled away in a blur, and I left, convinced that I definitely did not want to see Hairy Harry angry.
4
The first place to look for a lost dog—even a ferocious hellhound—was in the Unnatural Quarter animal shelter. It was a long shot, but I wanted to cover all the bases. Besides, Robin liked to look at the puppies.
Robin has a personality that makes her want to help the downtrodden, including oppressed monsters, anyone caught up in unfortunate circumstances; by extension, her compassion embraces lost animals as well. She’s a beautiful young African American woman with a hard persistence when she’s on a case and a dazzling smile when she’s about to win. She believes in the Law and Justice (complete with the capital letters), but the real world doesn’t always operate the way her law books describe, and sometimes I have to bend the rules to shield her.
The UQ animal shelter was a cacophony of yips and growls, snarls, hisses, subsonic vibrations, and smells that made even my deadened zombie olfactory senses ready to shut down in dismay. Robin was stoic about it, though.
The animal shelter had specific sections for reptiles, felines, canines, large arachnids, and “other.” Some rooms were barricaded with heavy steel doors and reinforced bars; others had special spell wardings. A lost hellhound, no matter how large and ferocious, would’ve been the least of the animal shelter’s worries.
Robin and I made our way to a reception desk staffed by a young human woman with round glasses, long straight hair parted in the middle, and a Summer of Love hippy peasant dress. She seemed unfazed as a skeletal gray-skinned woman (and I use the term loosely) harangued her. “Puppies!” she shrieked. “I want all of your puppies.”
“I’m sorry, Miss De Ville, but we have no puppies available this morning,” said the receptionist.
Robin and I both recognized the name at once. Coupe De Ville, a well-known undead socialite, who threw gala fundraisers that attracted the Unnatural Quarter’s snootiest investors and philanthropists, though no one could quite identify which charities were the beneficiaries of such largesse. I suspected Coupe De Ville simply pocketed the donations to finance her lavish lifestyle.
Now, she pointed a long claw-like finger at the receptionist. “How can an animal shelter not have any puppies?” She swirled and glared at us as if we would join her in the shouting.
“Sorry, they’re all gone as of late last night,” said the poor receptionist.
Robin stepped up. “We were looking for puppies as well.”
“Actually,” I interrupted, “I’m trying to track down a missing hellhound that’s been on the rampage.” I withdrew one of our Chambeaux & Deyer Investigations business cards. “I’m Dan Shamble, Zombie PI. This is my partner Robin Deyer.”
“I was here first!” shrieked Coupe De Ville in a voice that would’ve made a chalkboard cringe in anticipation of sharp fingernails.
“And you’ve been here for quite some time,” said the mild-mannered receptionist.
The socialite’s white fur coat was comprised of countless small swatches of fur—from skinned lab rats, hundreds of them. Robin frowned. “Are those lab rat pelts?”
Coupe De Ville whirled on her, flashing sharp white teeth in what she might have considered a smile. “My lab rats, from my laboratory.” She said the word with an emphasis on BORE. “They displeased me.”
“And why do you want all the puppies?” I asked. She didn’t seem like a cuddly pet owner.
“For various purposes,” said Coupe De Ville before turning back to the receptionist. “Now, why don’t you have any puppies?” Her sharp claws scraped on the countertop leaving long gouges.
“We … lost them all,” the young woman admitted. “An animal activist group broke in last night, opened the cages, and set them free. They’re gone.”
Coupe De Ville looked furious.
“What about a hellhound?” I said. “Did you have any hellhounds?”
The receptionist looked at her records. “No, not in at least six weeks. Hellhounds tend to be adopted quickly.”
“Which animal activist group?” Robin asked. “I know several of them.”
“It was GETA. They left their calling card, graffiti scrawled a foot off the ground.”
I couldn’t figure out how the height of the graffiti letters would be significant, but Robin turned to me and explained. “GETA—Gremlins for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Little guys that cause a lot of havoc.”
“Gremlins as a species like to sabotage things,” I said.
Coupe De Ville snarled. “Little terrorists.”
Robin continued, “At first they were called GET-U, which stood for Gremlins for the Ethical Treatment of Unnatural-Animals. They liked the sound of the acronym, but in the end they disliked the hyphenate compound. Gremlins are inclined to sabotage, but they’re sticklers for grammar and punctuation.”
In a huff, Coupe De Ville swirled her white lab-rat coat. “Call me when you have more puppies.” She stormed out.
I tapped my cold finger on the business card, sliding it closer to the receptionist. “And hellhounds. If you get any lost hellhounds, call me. I have a distraught client who wants his dog back.”
5
After hours when I went for my usual beer on my usual bar stool at my usual place, McGoo was already there. He does a lot of business and pondering on that bar stool. During the day he caffeinates himself with sissy-sounding cinnamon lattes from the Transfusion Coffee Shop, and at night he takes the edge off with a pint or two of whatever is on tap at the Goblin Tavern.
Francine, the human bartender, took care of her patrons, most of whom were abuzz about what had happened at the New Deadwood Saloon. They congratulated themselves on choosing a less hazardous watering hole.
“Hey, Shamble,” McGoo said, raising his pint. “You know why companies don’t let zombies take coffee breaks? Because they have to retrain them afterward!”
So that was how the night was going to start out. It was no better and no worse than the usual. “I may be the butt of your jokes, McGoo, but you’re just a butt.” I stiffly maneuvered myself onto the bar stool.
I decided the best way to distract him from offering a second joke was to tell him my news. “Got a new client today, McGoo. Hairy Harry hired us to find his missing hellhound.”
Officer Toby McGoohan has seen all sorts of things in the Quarter—and I do mean things—from resurrected corpses in beauty parlors, to necromancy spells gone wrong, to tentacled monsters in the sewers, and an evil elf trying to drive Santa Claus out of the holiday business. He took all those things in stride, but now I thought his eyes might actually pop out of his skull.
“You mean, the Hairy Harry? But he’s retired. No one has seen him … since the last time they’ve seen him. He’s a legend. Every cop looks up to him, both naturals and unnaturals. He knows how to put punks in their place, and he doesn’t take crap from desk jockeys. Hairy Harry single-handedly busted up dozens of crime rings, even a crime octagon once. He cleaned up the streets of the Unnatural Quarter … until it all went south after what happened to his partner.” McGoo hung his head. “He was never the same afterward.”
I was about to ask more when the Goblin Tavern’s door opened and two towering hairy creatures entered. At first I thought they were wookiees, but I knew that was impossible because wookiees aren’t real. These two—one with matted brown fur and the other with a mottled gray and white pelt—were a Sasquatch and an Abominable Snowman, respectively. Their heads nearly scraped the ceiling as they walked around the bar tables, holding out a donation bucket and passing out leaflets.
They represented the Bigfoot/Yeti Visibility Society, “Yes We Do Exist!” They passed the patrons in the bar, holding out the change bucket, but no one seemed to notice them; they just continued their conversations. Since I’m soft-hearted (even if it’s not a beating heart), I fished out a dollar and dropped it in the bucket. Robin, with her deeply ingrained sense of social justice, would have been proud.
McGoo looked up, startled. “What was that for?”
“A donation for the Bigfoots and Yetis.”
He looked around and just glimpsed the two hairy creatures as they walked back out the door. “Oh, I didn’t know they existed. I was thinking about what happened to Hairy Harry.”
Francine brought me my own beer—I didn’t even have to order—and I took a sip. “Tell me about Hairy’s partner. He didn’t want to talk about it, but I gather that her name was Amy?”
“Yeah, she was a rookie and he was the curmudgeonly old cop. Insisted that he didn’t want a partner, that he always worked solo, but his chief stuck him with a young lady fresh out of the Academy, cute as a button. Officer Littlemiss. Hairy Harry never stopped being a curmudgeon, but she grew on him.”
“I’ve seen that movie,” I said. “In fact, several dozen of them.”
“They were chasing a mummy mobster, Lenny Linens, who made a fortune selling counterfeit monster versions of classic Hummel figurines. Hairy Harry and Officer Littlemiss tracked him to the warehouse where he stored the black-market Hummels. Officer Littlemiss suggested calling for backup, but Hairy wanted none of that. The rookie wanted to use due process and arrest Lenny Linens so he could have a fair trial.”
“I can guess how that went over with Hairy Harry.”
“You’d guess right,” McGoo said. “He didn’t want the kid
in the line of fire, so he told her to stay put outside while he broke into the warehouse. Hairy stalked the mobster through the warehouse, prowling along the dim aisles.”
I felt a sense of dread. “I’ll bet Amy didn’t stay outside. She went in to help him, right?”
“Yes. I read the full inquiry—every cop does. It was a real cat and mouse. The two of them separate, tracking Lenny Linens—and when the mobster felt cornered, he started shooting. Shattered Hummel figurines everywhere.” McGoo shook his head. “But that wasn’t the real tragedy. Officer Littlemiss ran to flank the mummy while Hairy Harry bounded along the rows of boxes. Officer Littlemiss cornered Lenny Linens, told him to freeze, identified herself as UQPD.
“From the other side of the stacked boxes, Hairy Harry says all he heard was voices, then a gunshot. He opened fire with his .44 Magnum, blasted craters right through crates of vampire shepherd boy figurines and little werewolf riding hoods and cute baby witches with angel wings. Hairy Harry prided himself on shooting first and not bothering to ask questions later.”
My heart was always a dead lump in my chest but now it felt heavier. “He shot Officer Littlemiss, not the crime boss?”
McGoo nodded. “When Harry realized what he’d done, he crashed through the shelves, pounced on Lenny Linens, and unraveled the mummy entirely. At the inquest, he said he was in such a blind rage he didn’t even realize what he was doing. You know the rest of the story, Shamble. Big scandal, Harry booted off the force, couldn’t live with himself, and just disappeared.” McGoo lifted his beer in a silent salute. “We still consider him a hero at the UQPD.”
I raised my glass to touch his, but I was already thinking about the case. “And now someone stole his hellhound.”
6
The next morning as Robin met again with the divorcing ghost couple, I went to check out the veterinary clinic where Hairy Harry had made an appointment for Lucky. Fortunately, there had been no further incidents of a rampaging, ferocious beast the previous night, but it was only a matter of time. In the Quarter, it’s always something.