Some cars were engineered for speed, but in a scenario where traveling from point A to B in the least amount of time was paramount, Kip’s ride left its occupants in a rut. On the plus side, the back roads leading toward Easton were relatively traffic-free at this time of night, save for a few intolerant truckers who tested their loads’ limitations on serpentine byways. Bruce remained crouched in the backseat, only occasionally craning his neck to peer out the rear window to make sure nobody was following them. A highway mile-marker indicated that their destination was fewer than five miles away. Kip tried to maintain an aura of calmness during this commute, but a skeleton-knuckled grip on the steering wheel shredded his paper-thin facade.
Bruce, as he was accustomed to doing, tried to sugarcoat the drama. “You wouldn’t ever look at me and consider me a dangerous dog, would ya?”
“You’re a beagle,” Kip replied. “How vicious can you be?”
“What if I told you that I once bit the bleeping bleep out of a German Shepherd?”
“I’d probably think you’d be trying to pull the wool over my eyes.”
“Shepherds pull wool, Kip, not beagles.”
“So you were really in a dog fight before?”
Bruce puffed out his chest a bit as he sat upright on the seat. He suddenly looked like a wingman stationed beside a pilot. “More than once. I spent some time in the pound before the MUTTS got to me. You don’t prance down those corridors more than once without attracting some unwanted attention. It seemed that every mongrel in there had a bone to pick with me.”
“How come?”
“You ever meet a dog that doesn’t like fresh meat? I learned to keep my tail low and to watch my back. But as you might’ve guessed, there’s always an alpha in the mix, looking to piss in your water dish when your tail is turned.”
“So this German Shepherd marked his territory?”
Kip’s attention reverted to the road momentarily; a barreling semi swerved into a passing lane and nearly rammed him off the road’s soft shoulder. Kip had quite a few expletives simmering in his brain, but all he managed to spew out was, “Road hog!”
“Has this engine got any more kick to it?” Bruce asked.
“The pedal is to the metal. We’re at max speed.”
“Is this thing a Taurus or a tortoise? I’ve seen hairdryers with more torque.”
In this case, the Taurus’s speedometer topped off at about 65mph, not exactly an Aston Martin in motion. “I think I need a tune up,” Kip said.
“Either that or a junkyard,” Bruce returned.
“Hey, none of this was my idea, okay? So just cut me some slack. Beggars can’t be choosers, right? Even when they are dogs.” Bruce didn’t want to argue with logic. Kip made his point and settled back into a steady if somewhat sluggish pace along the curving asphalt. He now felt comfortable enough to resume their dialogue. “Now what were you saying about that German Shepherd?”
“Oh, you still wanna know how I kicked his tail, huh?”
“I bet you couldn’t even reach his tail.”
“O ye of little faith. I’ll have you know that beagles are now ranked number thirty on the most dangerous dogs’ list.”
“There’s really such a list?”
“Yeppers, I saw it on the Internet once, so it must be true.”
Kip navigated another bend in the road. He wasn’t paying too much concern to an approaching pair of headlights behind him. Bruce seemed momentarily lost in his own reverie as he recounted one of his scraps with a dog at least three times his size. “That mutt thought I’d just roll over and whimper for mercy,” he continued. “His name was Bleach.”
“Bleach? Like Clorox?”
“More like bleach as in blonde. As rumor had it, he inherited a rather infamous bloodline. I learned that he might’ve been a descendant of Blondi.”
“Deborah Harry’s rock band?”
Bruce rolled his eyes. If he had a problem with anger management, he might’ve snapped at Kip for his idiocy.
“Don’t you watch the History Channel? Blondi was Hitler’s dog. Would it surprise you to know that Nazi scientists experimented with trying to get dogs to talk, read, and write since World War II?”
“Until today, I wouldn’t believe a word you’re saying.”
“Well, I guess it’s never too late to have an open mind, even if it has to be done with a sledgehammer. Anyway, Bleach tangled with the wrong hound dog on that day. He limped away. His goose-stepping days were done. I ripped him another bleephole for my trouble.”
“I’m curious. How’d you manage to get the best of Bleach?”
“Two words: sack attack.”
Kip’s eyes instinctually lowered to his crotch as he cringed. “You don’t mean…?”
“Yes, I do mean. I went for his gonads. When in doubt, go low. Bleach had a lot of balls, but no one ever said that about him again after our little tussle.”
“You bit them both off?”
“I bagged me one. The other ball just sort of dangled off his scrotum like an eyeball popped from its socket. Last time I heard his new nickname was Lance.”
“That’s unbelievable. I wouldn’t think you’d do something like that.”
“Ah, don’t get all petrified on me, Kip. It didn’t turn me into a tea-bagger. But when I get testy, I take it to the testes.”
“What makes you the most angry?”
“Besides questions about my temperament, anyone who praises the film version of Howard the Duck always gets my dander up.”
“I can’t blame you for feeling that way. That movie really laid an egg.”
“Kip, leave the puns to me. You may quack yourself up, but the rest of us just don’t get your jokes or your yokes.”
The car behind the Taurus shortened the distance between them on the road, but it wasn’t nearly noticeable enough to cause Kip to glance into the rearview mirror more than once. At the moment, Bruce still hadn’t acknowledged anything suspicious.
“Have you ever been in a scuffle?” Bruce asked. Kip’s lingering silence indicated the infrequency of such incidents.
“I sell mattresses, Bruce. I’m not a cage fighter.”
“That doesn’t answer my question entirely. When’s the last time you flat out kicked bleep?”
Kip’s response was generated by embarrassment more than anything else. “You’re putting pressure on me now. I can’t remember.”
“I’m thinking high school, right? In self-defense, of course.”
Another pause. This gave Kip a chance to glower with his sternest poker face. He couldn’t even recall a confrontation in high school where he fought back, although that didn’t mean he’d never got beaten up. In Kip’s time, bullying was the norm. Ass-kicking 101 was a fixture on every geek’s schedule. It was nearly a prerequisite for graduation.
Before Kip jogged his memory for an episode that showcased his skills as a combatant, the headlights streamed into the car’s rearview mirror. A vehicle behind him had closed ground at an accelerated pace. “Someone is behind us,” Kip said. “A car is coming up pretty fast.”
Bruce veered his head in the direction of the lights. The situation was exactly as Kip specified, only worse. The offending car unleashed its LED police lights upon them. “Holy Rizzuto! It’s the fuzz!” yelped Bruce.
“Don’t have a cow. Maybe he’s not after us.”
“And maybe you’re a huckleberry!”
“Should I stop? What do you think he wants?”
“I’m sure he’s not selling tickets to a twi-night doubleheader.”
The cruiser’s crimson lights whirled and its siren pealed. Bruce knew they had no chance to outrun their pursuer. “Just pull over,” he advised. “And try to act calm. I’ll let you do the talking.”
“I wasn’t even going fast.” Kip had already maneuvered his car to the road’s graveled shoulder. “He must know something. We’re gonna get caught.”
“Don’t presume anything. It could be just a routine traffic stop.” Bruce hoped that
his optimism proved accurate, but he was already calculating an escape plan as a precaution.
Just because it was after midnight didn’t mean that a uniformed patrolman had to take off his mirrored sunglasses. If the law had a mascot, this officer would’ve fit the suit. His forehead was harder than a truncheon and his jaw squarer than Sponge Bob’s pants. He sauntered toward the Taurus as if he rode upon an unbridled horse rather than a squad car. The cop nibbled on a toothpick like a rat as he inspected the vehicle. When his flashlight’s beacon hit Kip’s face, he knew exactly how to contort his expression to achieve maximum intimidation. He wedged the toothpick in a space between his two front teeth. Kip’s hand cranked the window down; he looked guilty even before warbling a syllable.
“In quite a hurry, aren’t you, buster?”
“I wasn’t speeding,” Kip said. He tried not to appeal to Bruce for confirmation on this claim.
“License, registration, and insurance,” the cop said in monotone.
“Ze papers, ze papers,” Bruce murmured in a mock German accent. He then stretched across the seat and took a gander at the man’s fingers. Meanwhile, Kip tensely fetched the requested documents from his glove box. The patrolman grabbed the credentials with a zealousness that rivaled a guard in the Third Reich. Kip drummed his fingers nervously on the steering wheel as the cop inspected his paperwork. This behavior prompted Bruce to nudge his elbow with his nose.
“May I ask why you pulled me over, officer?”
“You crossed the yellow line about a half mile back,” the cop answered.
“I don’t remember doing that.”
“Maybe you’ve been hittin’ the sauce, Mr. Hinkle. Is that a possibility?” The cop shined his flashlight’s beam into the car’s interior. Bruce almost flaunted a toothy grin, but decided to maintain a low profile instead. Kip denied the officer’s accusation by shaking his head, but the cop seemed resolved on finding something out of order. “Do you have tags for that dog?”
“What? This dog?” Kip pointed inelegantly toward Bruce, who was now posed on the passenger’s seat like a tattered stuffed animal. “He belongs to a friend of mine. I’m bringing him back home.”
“The dog’s not wearing a collar or a leash,” said the cop.
“Does he need those things in the car?”
“Are you gettin’ curt with me?”
“No, sir. I’m just tired and cranky. I’ll make sure I get the dog a collar…and a leash, okay?”
Kip’s obedience was cloying enough to make a lapdog blush. Luckily, Bruce was already trained to deal with blubbering sycophants. The officer continued to peruse the documents, allowing time for Kip to observe the reflection of his own anxiousness in the man’s mirrored lenses.
“Wait here,” the cop commanded. He strutted away from the car looking like he’d need surgery to extract a splintered pylon from his rectum. Once the officer returned to his squad car, Bruce assessed the situation.
“Did you get a good look at that guy? Quick, who does he remind you of?” Bruce asked.
“What’s the difference?”
“He’s the spitting image of Mort Mills.”
“Who the heck is that?”
“He’s that highway patrolman who questioned Janet Leigh in Psycho. He’s got the same sunglasses and scrutinizing stare.”
“How do you know these things? Wait, better question: why do you know these things?”
“I’m a dog, Kip. It’s my unsworn duty to regurgitate trivial crap. But I’ll tell you what isn’t trivial. Our psycho cop has an agenda. Did you eyeball his right hand?”
A vigilant spy would’ve done so, but Kip hinted that he wasn’t quite at that level. “No, was I supposed to notice his hands?”
“Only if you were looking for a chip.”
“Are you saying that he’s working for them?”
Bruce had already scanned the side of the road, which by chance was bordered by a string of pine trees. He then glanced back toward the squad car. “We’re gonna have to make a mad dash for it, Kip,” he said.
“Run? We can’t just run away. That cop knows who I am now. Besides, he’ll catch us.”
“Speak for yourself. He’s waiting for backup. In five minutes, the MUTTS will be on us like bloodhounds on quail, and I’m not talking about politicians who can’t spell ‘potato’ either. Can you run really fast in those pirate boots, bucko?” Kip sensed a bout of dizziness overtaking him again. He clasped the steering wheel with both hands and inhaled deeply.
“Hold on,” Kip said, still breathing abnormally. “I’m feeling a bit of vertigo.”
“Geez laweez, isn’t one Hitchcock reference enough for you tonight?”
“What are you talking about? I…I feel dizzy.”
“Never mind. It’s probably just a glitch in my chip. Are you ready to burn some calories, Scottie?”
“Why’d you call me ‘Scottie’?”
“You’ll find out some day. Why spoil the intrigue?”
Kip hesitated, but the cop still hadn’t returned to the car with his credentials. The longer the officer stalled, the more plausible Bruce’s impulsive theory sounded. Even if the beagle was wrong, Kip couldn’t afford to be right. He grabbed the manila envelope from the backseat and stuffed the map inside it.
“Okay. What do we gotta do?”
“See those trees?” Bruce pivoted his muzzle toward the passenger’s window. “We got to take the scenic route until get to the first drop zone. We’ll lose him in the woods. That copper won’t follow us.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“His shoes are as shiny as black marble. He’s as neutered as I am. The only difference is, he doesn’t know it yet. All fluff but no stuff.”
“I’ll take your word for it. When do we make our move?”
“On the count of E.T.’s fingers, not including his thumb.”
“Is that three?”
“Good boy. We’re almost home. Who needs Elliot and Spell & Speak when I got you?”
Kip counted, and on the agreed number they bolted from the Taurus and bounded toward the camouflage flourishing alongside the roadway. Kip almost stumbled down an embankment, nearly dropping the envelope’s contents in the process. But for a man who ran less often than a bowlegged invalid, he didn’t do too badly in his own estimation. As far as Bruce went, he never broke into a pant. All those yoga videos must’ve taught him something after all.
“C’mon, Kip,” Bruce hollered. “You run slower than Lee Majors in slow motion.”
Eventually, Kip caught up with Bruce, but he was visibly winded. “Hey, I don’t run too shabby for a guy my age, okay?”
“I’ve seen sap drip down the trunk of a maple tree faster.”
Surprisingly, at least from Kip’s point of view, there was no ensuing chase. The cop didn’t even get out of his squad car and fake a charge. About four hundred yards later, Kip stopped and leaned against a sapling that looked about the same width as his body. Bruce spent a few seconds sniffing at the air before he decided that they were at least temporarily outside the range of capture.
“Just give me a minute,” Kip huffed. “I guess I’m not in the best shape of my life. I don’t want to break down on you.”
“If that happens, I don’t even think Oscar Goldman could rebuild you.”
“You know, I’d give you six million dollars if you stopped picking on me.”
“Forget it, Kip,” Bruce said. “But I changed my mind about that cop. He doesn’t remind me of the Psycho patrolman after all. I’m now thinking along the lines of Eric Estrada in the late 70’s and early 80’s, when he played Ponch.”
“The guy from CHiPS?”
“Yeppers. Sort of ironic when you think about it now, huh?”
“I don’t want to think about it.”
“Ah, you’re about as much fun as a tapeworm coiled in barbed wire, you know that?”
At this point Kip wasn’t compelled to debate anything related to television or his personality. He just
wanted this night to be over.
Chapter 17
Mark, There's a Beagle in My Bedroom! Page 16