Hair of the Dog

by Gordon Carroll

“If he contacts you, call me. Day or night. And don’t let on like you know anything. This man is dangerous. You understand?”

  He nodded again, still looking like he wanted to puke. Couldn’t blame him.

  I got back in my car and started toward I-25. I’d half expected Jerome to keep going south toward New Mexico or Texas. If he was heading north, and as beat up as he was, chances were he’d hold up for the night and that meant a hotel.

  My phone vibrated and I saw it was Senator Marsh.

  “Mason,” I said.

  “This is Senator Marsh. We have the men from the house in custody and I have my boys going over it to see if they can find anything useful.”

  “I already did a cursory search,” I said. “I found where he works and some aliases he goes under. He got there before I could and picked up some cash. He headed north on I-25 from Castle Rock. He’ll probably hold up for the night, so I’m going to start checking hotels.”

  “What makes you think he won’t just drive through the night?”

  I felt my cheek and winced. “We had a tussle and if he feels anything like I do, he’ll need to rest up.”

  “Yes,” said that smooth Morgan Freeman voice, “I saw the results of your…tussle. Did you actually torture one of those men to get information?”

  “I think they call it extreme interrogation techniques these days,” I said. “You know, like waterboarding.”

  “Waterboarding has been deemed unconstitutional by the United States Congress,” said the senator, who sounded more like Freeman’s character in London Has Fallen where he played Vice President Allan Trumbull; all authoritarian like.

  “Actually,” I said, “it was my dog Max that did the extreme parts of the interrogating. I just asked the questions.”

  Vice President Trumbull didn’t sound amused. “Remember that you are working under the authority and constraints of the United States Secret Service. I expect you to conform to their standards and operate under official parameters and guidelines. Do I make myself clear, Mr. Mason?”

  “Hey, you came to me,” I said.”

  “Yes,” said Marsh, “But that doesn’t mean you have carte blanche to go wild through the streets. We have rules.”

  “Sure,” I said, “I understand. Now let me ask you something. Do you want me to find this little girl or not?”

  There was a pause and I could hear him breathing in the phone. And when he answered, he sounded more like the Morgan Freeman from the movie Seven when he was asking Brad Pitt not to look in the box. “Of course I do.”

  “Good, then we understand each other. If you wanted to play by the rules, you wouldn’t have brought me in. You would have turned it over to the local authorities or gone with the FBI. But that’s not who you came to. You came to me because you want that little girl safe more than you care about the rules. That’s why I took the case and that’s why I’m going to find her and that’s why you are going to skip the lectures from here on out and let me do what I do. Deal?”

  When he spoke, he was the Vice President Morgan Freeman again, full of authority and strength, but I could tell I’d won.

  “What do you need?”

  “I need everyone you have out and about looking for the car. This Jerome is street savvy so he may have switched the plates, or he may change cars altogether. He had the same Chevy when he left the worksite, according to his boss, but that doesn’t mean he’ll keep it since he knows we are on to him. He’s managed to stay hidden for two years and that’s not easy, especially with a little girl. Next, I want you to lean on the Bloods that were at the house and find out what you can. I especially want to know how they found out Jerome and Keisha were here at the same time I did.”

  “What are you saying?” asked the Senator.

  “I think it’s self-explanatory,” I said. “You have a leak. Someone on your team or in your office. I don’t believe in coincidence, so that means someone let on you were coming to me. The only way they could have arrived at his place the same time I did was that they followed me. And I didn’t tell anyone about Jerome, which means the leak has to be on your side of the street.”

  “Ok,” he said. “That makes sense. I’ll check into it.”

  Senator Marsh looked over at Clyde. They were on the top floor of The Hilton Denver Inverness Hotel in the luxurious Presidential Suite. He’d finished a round of golf just before speaking with Mason, coming in at two under par. He was feeling good. Except for the talk of a leak.

  “My man Mason thinks you are leaking information to the Bloods,” said the senator.

  “I told you he’d be trouble,” said Clyde, setting his bottled water on the table beside him and standing up from the couch across from the senator.

  Marsh motioned for him to sit back down.

  “No hurry. It doesn’t matter. The important thing is that he’s already got a new lead on Larkin and the girl. The man is incredible.”

  “What clued him in on the Bloods?” asked Clyde.

  “The fact that they showed up as soon as he found the girl.”

  “Humph,” shrugged Clyde. “Not enough for anything.”

  “Still,” said the senator, “the man is sharp.” Marsh grinned. “Not to mention you were wrong.”

  Clyde’s big head swiveled toward him. “About what?”

  “He found the girl, fought Larkin, and he’s still alive.”

  “Didn’t get her though.”

  “No,” said Marsh. “No, not yet. But my money’s still on him.”

  “Maybe you should just forget her,” said Clyde.

  Marsh’s eyes turned and Clyde knew he’d gone too far. The big man swiveled his head back toward the window and the incredible view of the mountains to the west.

  “Don’t talk stupid,” said Marsh. “You know better than that.”

  “It’s just that everything we’ve worked so hard for all these years is finally falling perfectly into place, and I don’t think this is the time for distractions.”

  Marsh calmed himself and took in the same view as his old friend. “We tie up this one loose end and it will be smooth sailing from here on. But it has to be tied and tied tight, otherwise the whole thing could come unraveled.” Marsh saw an eagle or a falcon, it was too far to be sure, dive down at some prey on the ground. “I want a different detail on him. All different players.”

  “Already done,” said Clyde. “The boys he took out we already sent back to Chicago. Don’t know that it will matter though. Another bunch of gangsters show up, your smart boy’s going to know something’s wrong.”

  The bird swooped back into view, carrying some squirming rodent in its claws. Marsh smiled.

  “I’ll let him keep thinking we have a leak.”

  “If he lives,” said Clyde.

  “Yes,” agreed Marsh. “If he lives.”

  The sun was dipping below the mountains by the time I made it to Colfax. I met up with one of my oldest snitches, a black gentlemen whose street name is Ziggy. How he had survived this long, I couldn’t begin to know. Ziggy’s drug of choice is meth and he’s done a lot of it. I’ve tried to get him into rehabilitation programs more times than I can count, but he always refuses. He says the high is just too high, baby. For all the years I’ve known him he’s had this strange twitch, like a bird jerking about. His hands are palsied — they’ve been that way since before I met him — so I don’t know if it is a natural condition or a result of the drugs. Either way, Ziggy knows pretty much everything that happens in his little corner of the world, which starts at about Colfax and Havana and spiderwebs out to all the ratholes surrounding Denver and Aurora.

  “Big man and a little girl,” said Ziggy as he set his coffee cup down, his hands shaking, but somehow not spilling a drop. “Ziggy will keep his eyes open, yes sir that he will do.” He looked up at me with that twitch and the beginnings of cataracts in both eyes. “Heard say that doggy of yours got hurt. That true?”

  “Yes,” I said. “He took a bullet, but he’s going to be
okay.”

  “Pilgrim’s a good doggy. Ziggy always liked Pilgrim. He done et up some bad boys in his time, didn’t he?”

  “That he has,” I said, my lips curving at the corners.

  “Yeah, I did hear tell a time or two about him. Seen his handiwork once too. It were that Crip from the hood called. Slice. Ol’ Slice and Dice they used to call him. Dang if that doggy didn’t break his whole leg.”

  “Yes, he did,” I said. “Broke his femur through and through.”

  “Yes, sir, that he did. Ziggy seen it himself. Ziggy was in jail on account of buyin’ some crystal from an under, and he was in the same dayroom as ol’ Slice and he done shown me his self. The nurse was coming through for med run and she pulled off them bandages, on account of they couldn’t cast it yet because of the open wounds, and Ziggy is here to tell you, Ziggy ain’t never seen nothing like them bites. It were like that movie with the big ol’ white shark, the one where that man done scratched his nails on the chalkboard and about tore out Ziggy’s eardrums, yes he did. So when Ziggy sees them terrible wounds, Ziggy asks ol’ Slice if he would ever run from a police doggy again and Ziggy is here to tell you, it was kind of funny ‘cause ol’ Slice, he done gone nearly as pale as a white man and says to Ziggy, he says, ‘the thought wouldn’t enter my mind’. That’s how scared of doggies he were after that and Ziggy don’t blame him none at all. No, sir Ziggy sure don’t.”

  I felt the smile growing. Those were good times, good memories. Pilgrim was a monster in his day. And Marla and Jolene were both still alive and we were a family.

  After slipping Ziggy a couple of twenties, I drove back home and let Max out. He instantly disappeared into the darkness, and I felt a shiver of fear for any trespassing animals on my property.

  Pilgrim waddled out the pet door, his tail wagging, making my heart warm. I scrunched his fur and his ears and kissed him on the head. He licked my hands and nuzzled me. I found his ball with the rope and played tug-of-war, gently, letting him win after a few seconds and then starting all over again, telling him he was the strongest dog in the world in that high, girly voice that dogs love so much and respond to so well.

  I reheated some mac and cheese from the night before, grabbed a Cherry Dr Pepper from the fridge, and collapsed on the recliner. I held the cold soda to my cheek. It stung, but the cold felt good against the swelling. I needed a shower bad, but weariness crept through me like a thief and I didn’t think I would make it much past the food and drink. So I ate and drank and dragged myself to my bed where I stripped off my clothes and lay out flat on the covers. I was asleep so fast I didn’t even know it.

  But then came the dreams.

  14

  It was after nine in the evening when Jerome finally unstrapped Clair from her car seat and carried her into the Magic Dust Motel off of Colfax and Chambers. She fell asleep about two hours earlier while Jerome drove the streets looking for a new car to steal. He settled on a 2009, green, Ford Tahoe sitting in a residential neighborhood alongside a six-foot privacy fence. He rummaged the glovebox and visors looking for keys, but the owners were more cautious than that. He jacked the ignition with a flat-tip screw driver, a process that took his practiced fingers about forty seconds and then drove a few blocks to where he had left Clair slumbering in her seat. He simply unhooked the car seat, fixed it into the Tahoe and loaded on his bags and her toys and drove away. She never even woke up.

  Jerome lay Clair on the bed of the motel room and brushed her curly hair from her brow. She sucked her thumb, a habit from as long as he had known her, with her index finger curled around her nose.

  The walls in the bathroom were peeling and the grout in the shower was moldy and missing in chunks here and there. But the water ran hot and he let it pour over his torn and battered body for nearly an hour, easing the soreness from his muscles and cleaning the blood from his skin. He felt a world better when he toweled dry, although exhausted and loose. Several of his newly acquired holes seeped blood that ran thinly down his chest and thigh, pattering in pink drops on the tiled floor.

  He’d stopped at a Walgreens earlier and picked up a new First-Aid Kit, as well as several sewing needles and heavy gauge thread.

  Wrapping a towel around his waist, he sat on the end of the bed and started carefully threading a needle, which proved far more difficult than in times past due to his knuckles being torn up and his fingers swollen and tight.

  “Daddy?” Clair climbed against him from behind, her chin propped on his shoulder. “What are you doing?”

  “Sewing,” he said. “Want to help?”

  She nodded and slipped off the bed and came around in front of him. She took the needle in her small hands and closed one eye as she sighted in the eye of the needle and deftly slid the thread through. She pulled it around and looped it then handed it back to Jerome to tie it off. She hadn’t yet mastered her knots. Jerome had shown her several times, but it hadn’t quite caught.

  Jerome tied off the thread and, after spraying a liberal portion of Bactine across his chest, made quick work of the stab wounds by applying three stitches to each. Clair inspected his handiwork and nodded her head sagely, signifying it would do. The two of them went to the bathroom where he sat her on the counter while he stitched the cut over his eyebrow, keeping the loops tighter and closer together than he had on his chest. His fingers trembled from controlling the pain. By the time he finished, his forehead streamed sweat. He laid down on the bed, spread eagle, and Clair knelt next to him and kissed his cheek.

  “Poor, Daddy.”

  He hugged her to him. “I’m okay.”

  “Those men are bad,” she said.

  “Yeah,” he said, “yeah they’re bad. But I took care of them. You don’t need to be scared.”

  “Your nose looks fat,” she said. “Lips too.”

  Jerome ran his tongue across his teeth. The gums were sore, but the teeth felt secure.

  “Am I still pretty?” he asked.

  She grinned and touched his nose with one finger. “Does it hurt?”

  “A little,” he said.

  She curled up next to him and stuck her thumb back in her mouth.

  “Hungry?” he asked.

  She shook her head to the negative and closed her eyes.

  “Just sleepy,” she mumbled around her thumb.

  “That’s okay,” he said. “You sleep. Daddy is fine.” He gave her a squeeze and let her alone till her breathing ran deep and even.

  Jerome slipped off the bed, did a couple of shrugs to loosen his shoulders, and flexed his fingers like the white man he had fought earlier had done. It helped…a little.

  After he dressed, he locked the door behind him. Clair knew that if she woke up and he was gone, she was to stay in the room and not open the door for anyone.

  Jerome drove to the nearest strip joint, which wasn’t a far drive. The streets were alive at this time of night, with players and druggies and college kids out looking to score drugs, booze and girls. He circled TTs twice before spotting what he was looking for. He parked a block away and made his way through alleys until he came up on the man and two women parked at the back of the club. The girls were obviously dancers and the guy in the car was obviously trying to make a transaction for either drugs or sex or both. Either way, he had to have money on him. The man was black. The girls, leaning in on the open passenger side window, white. Jerome came out of the shadows on the driver’s side and reached the driver before he could react. He punched him once in the face, then grabbed his shirt and dragged him half way out the window. The man, already recovering, tried to grab for something in his pants. Jerome hit him again and he sagged, unconscious. Jerome did a quick pat-down while the girls screamed and cussed him out. He watched them from the corner of his eyes, knowing just how dangerous hookers could be. He pulled a cheap, snub-nosed .38 out of the guys pocket, along with about a quarter ounce of meth and several smaller baggies and a wad of bills rolled tight. The bills were hidden in the crotch of his sagging je
ans and because they were so loose, the roll was easy to retrieve. Jerome tossed the meth to the girls and they scrambled to snatch up the baggies, their screams and cursing completely forgotten. Jerome found the man’s wallet under the seat and took it with him.

  Clair still slept as he slipped into the room. One of the holes in his chest leaked from the stitches, but everything else pretty much held. After cleaning it up in the bathroom, he looked at the needle and thread. He just didn’t have it in him to do it right now. A little direct pressure and a bandage with tape did the trick. He dumped the money, wallet and weapon into his gym bag and stripped down to his boxers before lying next to his daughter and falling fast asleep.

  15

  The tinkle of glass; pain for an instant — the crash — the horrible crash. Gravity was defied as Marla’s sippy cup and Jolene’s sunglasses floated weightlessly inside the flipping van. I reached out for them as the Beetles sang about nothing changing their world, even as mine was being destroyed. Marla, morphing into Keisha as Jerome’s giant feet crunched on the glass, coming closer and closer. Jolene, telling me she loved me. The crotch rocket’s engine ratcheting up to a high pitched scream and the VW slowly cruising past my view. I tried to move — to get up — to cry out — and then I saw him — his face — the stitches — the rings — the spiked hair — and it wasn’t Jerome — only in the way of dreams, it also was. My mind called for Max — willing him to destroy this monster — to rip its throat out and let its evil blood spill on the street — but Max hadn’t been born yet and the still vibrant Pilgrim was home sleeping in his doggy bed. The Jerome not-Jerome thing knelt down in front of me, cocking its head this way and that as if trying to come to a decision it had already reached. I prayed for God to strike it down — to send fire from the sky and burn it alive — to make it ash and dust and dead — but the face morphed back and forth from Stitch to Jerome to Stitch, and the sky held only darkness and horror and I watched silently as the creature stood and turned and walked toward Keisha, held captive in her car seat. Rage and terror and utter helplessness exploded inside my chest; the beating of my heart ripping at the speed of a drummer’s riff. I screamed inside my mind and raged behind my eyes as the monster continued its path, and I heard the boom and saw the red dimple appear, as if by magic, in the center of Keisha’s forehead; a red drop, blooming like a fatal flower, spreading and growing until it poured like the river Nile, touched by Moses’ staff. A portent of the Angel of Death that steals the first born. In the dream, I couldn’t stand — couldn’t move — couldn’t scream. I could only watch as history played itself out with different players and different sets, like actors in some ghastly Shakespearian tragedy. A part of me knew it was only a dream, but that part was too small to stop the pain and the horror and the guilt, and I prayed to wake up, just like I prayed that night, only I didn’t wake up then and I didn’t wake up now.