Hair of the Dog

by Gordon Carroll

  “Coffee, tea or…?”

  “You,” broke in the Senator with a grin and a finger pointed at me. I could see he had an actor’s charisma. He gestured at the couch, this guy was big on gestures, “Do you mind?” he asked.

  “No, of course, please sit,” I said, not used to being the straight man.

  “Do you have any beer?” asked the Senator. “I haven’t had a Coors beer in decades. Back in the day, my friends and I would make runs to Colorado just for a few cases. We’d fetch a pretty penny too. And please, have one with me.”

  I walked over to the fridge, grabbed out a couple of cans. I looked over at the mountain who just gave me the thousand-yard stare. I decided against pushing it and handed the senator his beer.

  “Ah, thank you.” He popped the top and slugged back a healthy portion. “Now that’s Colorado.” He wagged his eyebrows in appreciation.

  Oh he was smooth, this one was.

  “I’d like to hire you,” said the Senator.

  “Really? A United States Senator wants to hire me?” I did my own gesturing taking in all his men. “A man with his own army wants to hire me? Why, what on earth for?”

  The Senator chuckled and nodded his head, the white golfing visor looking very bright against his dark skin, and suddenly I was thinking maybe not Red from Shawshank…maybe God in Bruce Almighty… with a little less white in the hair.

  “I’d heard you were a bit of a comic.” Then the smile left his face. “But that’s not what I’d be hiring you for. You see, I have also heard that you are the best in the field at finding people.”

  “And where exactly did you hear that?” I asked, still standing, my beer unopened. The mountain was also still standing, his eyes scanning as if he was expecting Kato to spring from behind the couch.

  “Do you remember a young lady named Cissy Blake?”

  I did, of course. Cissy had been a stripper at Elephant Guns, a classier, for lack of a better word, strip club in a small city called Gunwood. She’d gone missing one night after a show and her sister, a friend of a friend of a friend of mine, made contact with me. The police weren’t doing much yet, what with her being a dancer and only gone for two days, but the sister was sure something very bad had happened to her. Through incredible detective work and a few giant strokes of luck, I tracked down the worm that had kidnapped her and rescued her from the dugout pit he had built to keep her in under his shed. It took me twelve hours. The nutcase that took her burst in the shed door just as I was ripping the boards from the pit to pull her out. He had a shotgun. I took it from him and broke several bones in all four of his stupid limbs with it before getting her out and calling the police. I did, however, unload the gun before handing it to Cissy while I stepped outside the shed to call the police. Funny, I didn’t remember the stock of that gun being broken like that before I handed it to her.

  “Well,” continued The Almighty, “she was enrolled in a program in Chicago to help way-word girls get straight. One of the counselors there is a friend of my wife’s. She told me Cissy’s tale. Of course I’ve had you thoroughly vetted through other means as well, but I have to confess that Cissy’s story is what really convinced me to choose you.”

  Imagine, being chosen by God. I thought I was beginning to understand how Jim Cary…er, I mean, Noah felt.

  “And who is it you want me to find?”

  He nodded toward the mountain and magically a folder appeared in Clyde’s massive mitts. He handed it to Morgan, who opened it and sifted through the contents, breathing through his nose.

  “In these pages, Mr. Mason, is one of the most disturbing cases ever to cross my desk. I don’t suppose news of it made it from Chicago to Colorado. And to tell you the truth, because of the circumstances, it really didn’t make much of a stir even locally.” His jaw clenched and he breathed deeply through his nose again. “But I can tell you that it sickened me to the depths of my soul. The Chicago police have been less than sufficient in solving it. Which is why I have turned to an outsider…to you.” He pulled out a surveillance picture, grainy, black and white, of a small girl walking beside a giant in what looked like the aisle of a Walmart Store.

  I squinted my eyes suspiciously at Mountain, back to the picture, then back to Mountain. “Is this you?”

  The Senator shook his head, the smile back but more a grimace. Mountain just continued giving the thousand yard stare.

  “This man,” continued the Senator, “is Jerome Larkin. He was a hit man for a segment of the Bloods in Chicago. Three years ago he slaughtered four human beings, including this little girl’s mother, during a robbery and kidnapped her. She hasn’t been seen or heard from since…until now. This picture was captured from a surveillance video less than a week ago from a store in Aurora, Colorado. And that little girl is Keisha James. She would be five years old now. Her aunt and uncle would very much like to have her back, safe and sound and away from the man that murdered her mother.” He looked up at me, and now he was a stern god, full of vengeance and wrath, his eyes boring into mine. “Will you help me get her back to them?”

  I walked to the little desk in the corner, where I keep my laptop and opened the drawer. I took out one of my coins, stamped with my logo, the silhouette of a K9 head inside a star with the words SHEEPDOG DETECTIVE AGENCY circling the head and the line Keeping the wolves at bay and a Bible verse, across the back. I use them as business cards. I handed it to him.

  “Yes, I’ll find her for you.” What else could I do? I wasn’t about to say no to God.

  3

  Max sniffed the three vehicles, taking in the various scents that seeped from the minuscule gaps and spaces of fitted parts. Rubber seals and acetylene welds might keep out water for a prolonged amount of time, but even the best of man’s precision could not stop molecular drifting of scent spores as they passed almost magically through the smallest of fractures and breaks.

  His canine brain catalogued each of the fragmented scents into their corresponding recognition points allowing him instant access and recall.

  He took in the rubber of the tires, the cloth of the seats, the enamel and glue and carpet. His incredible scent receptors collected and divided the diverse scents associated with each of the humans that had occupied the vehicles. He had them now and forever. If it ever came to a hunt, Max would find them.

  Pilgrim was rolling lazily in the grass, that was just turning green from the spring rains and late snow melt. One of the men walked close to him and Max tensed inwardly. Pilgrim, way past his prime, was further hampered from his recent injuries and if the man showed any intent to hurt the shepherd, Max would disembowel him. But the man continued past without even looking down at the big dog and so Max allowed him to move along unmolested.

  By the side of the Alpha is where Max belonged, in case the men inside attacked. Max could feel their violence radiating from them like rising heat. But their voices, although un-hearable to the humans, were clear and strong to Max’s ears through the walls of the house. The conversation remained stable and calm. So Max waited and took in more data, storing it for future battle. His eyes caught the slight hitch in the step of the man that walked past Pilgrim, evidence of an old wound that could prove useful in a fight. The lack of mobility on that side made it a tactical target to be taken advantage of if need be.

  As he scanned the others, he detected injuries in several of them that they had overcome and survived. This triggered an instinctual knowledge in Max’s brain, warning they were all combat veterans and not to be taken lightly. Max’s own wounds, healed and healing, were a tribute to his warrior status.

  These men were not coyotes…these men were wolves. Dangerous, deadly. A part of Max wanted to strike, to attack, not just one, but all of the men. To prove himself the Alpha over them. But Max was not the Alpha. Not yet. And he had to wait until given permission. The law of the pack commanded him… restrained him… but just barely.

  4

  Morgan Freeman left me the folder along with a flash driv
e with everything he, the Chicago Police Department and even the FBI had on Mr. Jerome Larkin and Miss Keisha James (being a United States Senator has its perks). He shook my hand before stepping back into his car and I have to admit, I was a little afraid that when I pulled my hand back I might have seven fingers. But I didn’t and he gave me the exact same three pumps as when we first shook. Too bad he didn’t endow me with all the powers of deity like he did to Bruce, it would make finding Jerome and Keisha a lot easier.

  The Mountain named Clyde and his posse all clambered back into their vehicles and away they went.

  So much for my weekend off.

  Max materialized beside me so silently it almost didn’t scare me. I looked at him…he looked back at me. I looked at the stirred-up dust the three SUVs had kicked up. Max looked that way too.

  “What do you think, boy?” I asked him.

  The growl was so deep and so low it sounded like it was bubbling up from the darkest part of his soul.

  I rubbed his head and the growl stopped. Progress.

  “Feds,” I said. “They can be a little arrogant. Don’t let it get to you.”

  He moved his head from under my hand and looked at me. I nodded; baby steps. I was good with that. Safer. Max is a little…standoffish. But that’s okay. He had a rough childhood. The first time I saw him he was fighting a bear.

  “You could have taken him,” I said. “He’s big, but you’re faster.”

  Max looked back toward the settling dust and snorted. He walked to where the first SUV had stopped, lifted his leg and peed on the ground.

  Hard to argue with that.

  I went back into the house, emptied the rest of the senator’s beer into the sink, tossed the can in the trash, put my unopened can back in the fridge and took a mug down from the cupboard. I set it under the brewer, selected a dark roast K-cup and took in the rich aroma as the steaming liquid filled the mug. I considered sneaking a couple of cookies to go with it, but what with the reduced exercise due to the injuries from my last case and running still not allowed for a few more weeks, I decided against it. Setting the cup on the living room coffee table, I took up the folder the Senator had left me and started going through it. Beginning with the crime scene, I flipped through a series of photographs that would make Stephen King proud. Four dead bodies, all gunshot wounds. Keisha’s mother, a prostitute by profession with a hobby as a heroin addict (according to the police profile that accompanied the pictures) had a neat round hole in the center of her forehead. The pics of the exit wound were not so neat. She lay naked in the bed, the once white sheets now stained eternally crimson with her blood.

  The naked man had made it off the bed before being killed. Three shots, one to the throat, two to his right side. The coroner’s report told the tale. Both body shots had sliced through lungs and heart, their blunt mushrooming heads followed by expanding gasses, causing incredible damage.

  Ballistics showed the bullets to be forty-five caliber, my own bullet of choice. The naked man had managed one shot from a little .380, but it had missed.

  I switched to the pictures of the other two dead men. Both had been armed, their guns lying not far from their bodies, but neither had been fired. Both had been killed up close and personal. Gunpowder stippled the face of the man shot under the nose as well as the clothing of the second man hit three times in the chest in a nice, tight grouping.

  All participants in dying had long rap sheets, even the mother. She’d been busted multiple times, mostly drugs and prostitution, but she did a six month stint in juvi when she turned fifteen for her part in an armed robbery of a liquor store.

  The two clothed men were members of The West Side Slick Bloods (WSSBs), one of the three nastiest gangs in Chicago, and had been involved in everything from robberies to rapes. They both had several felony warrants out for their arrests and had been in and out the revolving door of the badly broken justice system that rules the Chicago courts and penal system. The last guy, the naked man, had done time for carjacking and theft from motor vehicles. He had a few assault charges including one with a gun, but no convictions for any of those.

  And then there was Jerome. I looked hard at the three different mug shots they had of him. The first showed a thirteen year old boy with several stitches over his right eye and badly swollen lips and nose. In the second, he was sixteen and way larger, with just a hint of a scar from the old stitches and no new wounds. The third showed an eighteen year old man, huge and street tough, but without the usual sneer you see in street tough thugs. In all the pictures there seemed something lacking. Something in the eyes. I looked hard and long, trying to figure it out, but couldn’t quite get it.

  There wasn’t a lot about him in the reports. Just the three arrests, all for assaults and always against multiple participants. After the last one, he never got arrested again. He was a suspect in a lot of stuff, but nothing the cops could ever make stick. Whatever might be lacking in there, he’d still managed to learn how to play the system.

  After that came a load of speculation, mostly from special gang tasks forces. Jerome was suspected of being one of the WSSBs up and coming hitters… AKA assassins. And that he may have taken out as many as seven rival gang members.

  I looked back at his picture, still not able to see what I was seeing, but knowing it was there.

  I went back to the crime scene reports.

  According to the investigation’s write up and the CSI team that worked the case, they believed the three Bloods were doing a drug deal with the two naked people when something went wrong and Jerome killed them all and took the money and the drugs. Then he found the little girl and decided to take her for ransom.

  That sounded pretty lame to me. It left open way too many questions. The first of which is why were three clothed guys doing a drug deal with a naked man and woman obviously already engaged in other activities?

  And why would a gang banger hit man suddenly decide to kidnap a little girl for ransom? Way too big a burden, and who would he ransom her too? Not to mention the fact that there had never been a demand for money or any type of contact between him and anyone else as far as the authorities knew. Besides, if he already had the drugs and the money, he would know everyone, including the police and his own former gang buddies, would be after him for the betrayal and killing of his Blood brothers. No way he would slow himself down with a little girl. It made no sense and as Judge Judy always says, “If it doesn’t make sense it isn’t true.”

  So what did happen? I tried to figure out scenarios where Jerome would take the girl. The only possible reasons I could think of were too horrible for me to want to contemplate. I decided I’d have to learn more about Jerome to have any chance of deciphering his possible motives. But going through the file, there was virtually nothing about him other than his police write up and mug shots.

  I decided to switch gears and googled Senator Alvin Marsh.

  Hmm. First elected to the United States Senate on November 4th, 1986. Served seven terms so far for, as he put it, the great State of Illinois. A Democrat, he worked with the Obama administration on a host of bills. He sits on several of the more important seats and has his hand in everything from healthcare to green energy to education. So far, at least, the current administration hadn’t tossed him off any of the seats, which meant he was either very powerful or knew how to get along with all the folks up on Capitol Hill. Married for thirty-three years to the same woman with nary a hint of impropriety and worked in local Chicago politics before his run for the senate in eighty-six. Digging a little deeper, I learned that he’d been an orphan who ran away from the state home when he turned fifteen. He joined a faction of the Bloods that had migrated from California to Chicago and were recruiting heavily in the area to increase their slender hold on the rapidly growing drug trade. Marsh had been arrested for assault against a rival gang member after his older brother, Patrick Marsh, was killed in a drive-by and he did a nine month stint in juvenile detention. While he was inside, he hooked
up with a new program to set kids straight, and for a change, it worked. He started helping as a member of a consumer rights organization called Illinois Public Action where he met a young political activist who later became the mayor of Chicago and started him on his path to politics. The rest, as they say, is history.

  Yawn. I drank some coffee and gave my cheeks a few slaps… politics makes me sleepy.

  5

  Senator Alvin Marsh sat across from his longtime friend and trusted body guard as the driver made his way down the twisting hog back.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  Clyde continued to scan the mountain outside the window.

  “Not impressed,” he said.

  Marsh chuckled. “You’d say that about Jason Bourne if you met up with him.”

  Clyde swiveled his eyes toward his master then back out the window.

  Marsh chuckled again.

  “You think different?” asked Clyde.

  “What I think is that Mr. Gil Mason is a lot more than what he lets on to be.”

  “Yeah?” said Clyde. “What’s that?”

  “Driven,” said Marsh. “Our Mr. Mason is a very driven man.”

  “And that makes him?”

  “The right man for the job,” said Marsh.

  “You think he’ll find her?”

  Marsh didn’t hesitate. “Yes. It may take some time, but he will locate her and Mr. Larkin.”

  “Larkin will kill him,” said Clyde.

  Marsh’s white eyebrows went up. “You think so?”

  “Yes.”

  Marsh chuckled. “You really don’t like him, do you?”

  “He’s nothing,” said Clyde.

  “You wait. I think Mr. Mason will surprise you, old friend. I really do.”

  Clyde didn’t say anything and Marsh knew he was brooding the way he had a tendency to do. Clyde was a man who liked to take care of things himself in his own way.