by Adam Howe
“Your buddy, ‘Nick’? He wants you to be in his next movie.”
Walt nearly dropped the liquor bottle he was holding. “Holy—He said that?”
“‘Course, he says you’ll have to lose some weight.”
Walt sucked in his gut. “I’m working on that already,” he bullshitted. “The last few pounds, I can always borrow some of Marlene’s diet pills.”
Oh, yeah. Those pills were working wonders for Marlene.
“And you’ll have to wear a hairpiece,” I said.
Walt squeaked a hand across his shiny bald dome.
His eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Wasn’t him, was it?”
I laughed, and he pitched a bar towel at me. “Not cool, Levine!”
“It was Muffet,” I told him. “Says he’s in some kinda trouble, thinks I can help.”
“What kinda trouble?”
“The deep shit kind was all he’d say on the phone.”
“Heh. Your specialty.”
“Not by choice.”
“Maybe you oughta go see him.”
“How’s that?”
“The cocksucker’s check for the damage to the men’s room bounced.”
“I warned you, that’s your own damn fault for taking a check from him.”
“I’d sure hate for something to happen to him before he pays what he owes.”
“You’re all heart, Walt.”
“I hear that a lot.”
2.
* * *
Later that afternoon, I bummed a ride from Lou, who was heading home to freshen up before he returned to The Henhouse for the late show. Lou dropped me off outside Harry’s Pre-Owned American Auto, tooting his horn as he tootled away in his mustard-colored Gremlin. Walking through the dealership lot, the first thing I noticed, there wasn’t a truck in sight—it was like there’d been a truck pogrom—except for the old beater Jeep Wagoneer parked prominently outside Harry’s trailer office. Any truck on the lot, my punchy ass.
Harry scuttled from the trailer. “Reggie! I knew you’d come!”
“That makes one of us.”
“So,” he said, gesturing grandly at my ‘new’ truck, “whaddya think?”
“That I wasted my time coming here.” I inspected the Jeep. “Is that rust?”
“Hell, no. That’s character. And just wait till you hear her. She roars like the MGM lion.” I thought it more likely she death-rattled like the lion that prick dentist shot. “Now before you take her for a spin, come inside.”
He clutched my arm and dragged me inside the trailer.
My feet braced themselves to be bushwhacked by Harry’s ugly fucking dog. I couldn’t see the mutt anywhere, but that didn’t mean the little monster wasn’t lurking, biding his time and waiting for me to lower my guard.
“No Miss Clemens?” I said.
She must’ve clocked out; her brassiere wasn’t hanging from her desk lamp.
“I gave her some time off till I get this business straightened out.”
Harry sank down with a sigh into the faux leather recliner behind his desk. The American flag was draped across the wall behind him. On the desk, a cheap plastic bust of a bald eagle was pinning down a stack of PAST DUE bills. There was also a framed photo of Harry and his wife standing proudly outside the dealership. Mrs. Muffet was a heavyset woman with a beehive hairdo and a face like the swarm had attacked it. She was wearing a gaudy rhinestone pantsuit that even Liberace would’ve thought excessive. The ugly fucking dog was clutched against her huge bosom like a canine mountaineer buried in a glittery avalanche.
On the wall was a rack of car keys; a crumpled single dollar in a glass display case, presumably the first buck Muffet ever swindled off a sucker; and a shrine of photos showing Harry shaking hands with a bunch of satisfied customers. A number of photos had been removed from the shrine, like a jigsaw puzzle with missing pieces. I figured these must have been customers whose satisfaction soured shortly after driving their new secondhand wheels off the lot.
In the corner of the trailer was a plush velvet pillow. Regal-red, coated in dog hair, indented with the little mutt’s impression. There was still no sign of Gizmo anywhere and my feet began to relax. Next to the pillow were bowls for food and water. On the shelf above it were doggie treats that probably cost more than my monthly grocery bill, gnarly chew toys, and an array of dog grooming products. There was also a trophy that looked like a gilded Monopoly dog. I took a closer look at the trophy inscription. “That—thing won a dog show?”
“Won a bunch of ‘em in his day,” Harry said. “‘Course he’s past prime now.”
“I know the feeling.”
“But he still rakes in the bucks as a stud.”
And there the similarities between Gizmo and me ended.
Harry swiveled his recliner towards a filing cabinet and pulled a half-empty whiskey bottle from the bottom drawer. He raised his eyebrow at me. I knew it was an old salesman’s trick. Get the mark loaded before talking turkey. All the same, I nodded. He poured us drinks, gave me my Dixie cup, and gestured for me to sit.
“So what’s the big emergency?” I said.
I could see him thinking how best to phrase it.
In the end, he must’ve figured: Fuck it.
He came right out with, “Are you familiar with the chupacabra?”
I was; after the skunk ape thing, I’d made it my business to bone up on my cryptozoology. Some people say the chupacabra is a wild, devil-dog; others, that it’s some kind of reptile; most right-minded folks say the legend is a crock of shit. Whatever the damned thing is, it’s believed to be responsible for a spate of cattle mutilations across the Southern states, in which the victims, often goats, are drained of blood. This has given the chupacabra its name, which in American translates to ‘goatsucker.’
I was starting to feel like a sucker myself.
I downed my drink, stood up to leave. “I knew this was a waste of time—”
“Wait!” He rooted through his desk drawers and fished out an advertising flyer.
I looked at the flyer. At Gizmo’s empty pillow. Back at Harry. “What the fuck?”
Harry choked down the lump in his throat and nodded.
The flyer read:
GRABOWSKI’S GAS & ZOO
AS READ ABOUT IN THE WEEKLY WORLD NEWS
REAL! LIVE! CHUPACABRA!
Below the text was a grainy black and white Xerox of Gizmo that didn’t do justice to the ugly fucking dog’s fucking ugliness.
“Well, I can see why a person would be confused.” Harry frowned at me. “It’s an ugly fucking dog, Harry.” He opened his mouth to object before ceding the point with a nod. “How exactly did this happen?” I asked him.
“Wipe that smirk off your face, I’ll tell you.”
He poured us another drink.
“Miss Clemens and I were working late—”
“Burning the old midnight oil, huh?”
“You wanna hear this or not?”
I mimed zipping my lips.
“As you may have noticed,” Harry said, “the AC’s on the fritz.”
I had noticed. The trailer was stifling hot, not to mention choked with the stench of dog and all those late nights Harry worked with Miss Clemens.
“So the other night, we’re working late, and it’s hot as hell up in here. I opened the windows, wedged the door open to get some air inside. I swear I only took my eyes off him for a second. Well … Five minutes, at least.”
I raised my Dixie cup in admiration.
Men our age, pushing forty, five minutes wasn’t bad going.
“By the time I even realized he was missing, Gizmo was gone, doggy, gone.”
“And you think this Grabowski guy stole him?”
“Hell, I don’t know. I’ll admit, there’s a little bad blood between us.”
“You sold him a car, didn’t you?”
“I can’t be held responsible once the car leaves the lot!”
“You ought to make that your sl
ogan,” I said. “Look. I don’t see what you expect me to do here, Muffet. I mean, it’s a funny story and all—”
“Funny? I’m happy as hell you’re getting a kick out of it, Reggie. But if my wife finds out I lost Gizmo, not to mention he’s currently the star attraction at a roadside zoo, I am a fucking dead man. She’ll bury me sans balls in Potter’s field. Reggie … Everything I got, every damn red cent, it’s all in that evil witch’s name.” He gave his hair a Bobby Kennedy-flick. “For business reasons.”
“And where is the little lady?”
Harry shuddered. “There’s nothing little or ladylike about that woman. Right now she’s in London, England. Chairing some kinda Kennel Club conference. The only reason she didn’t take Gizmo with her, the limeys would’ve quarantined him. She couldn’t bear it.”
“When are you expecting her back?”
“End of the week.”
“Plenty of time for you to bring in the law,” I said. “Go see Randy-Ray.” A story like this might take Gooch’s mind off his swollen balls. If he didn’t laugh ‘em off.
Harry shook his head. “Can’t risk it. The wife’s friendly with Mrs. Gooch. And you know how Randy-Ray likes to flap his jaw. No way she wouldn’t find out.”
“Then I don’t know what else to suggest.”
He raised his hand like a kid in class. “Can I make a suggestion?”
“Not if it involves me getting involved.”
He lowered his hand. “But—but you help people, don’t you?”
Here we went with that one-man A-Team shit again.
“I don’t know where the hell people got that idea.”
“You helped Ned Pratt.”
“I’d had the slightest idea what I was getting myself into, I wouldn’t have.”
“But this isn’t like that skunk ape thing!”
“Oh, give it time.”
“All I’m asking you here—and I really don’t think it’s too much to ask of a guy whose life I saved—all I’m asking is for you to get Gizmo back from Grabowski.”
“You make it sound easy.”
“It is easy!”
“That’s what worries me,” I said. “What’s this Grabowski like?”
“Old,” he said. “Nothing for you to worry about.”
“Like Mrs. Antwone and her .44 Magnum.”
“Alright. So he ain’t exactly a people person. In fact he’s a crotchety sonofabitch. But he’s harmless enough. He won’t try and plug you.” He considered this. “I mean, not unless you give him good reason.”
“Like if I try and take his chupacabra away?”
Harry gave a nervous laugh and slugged his drink.
I chewed it over some. Maybe it was Gizmo’s name, but I remembered a line from an old movie: With Mogwai comes much responsibility … That went double with being a hero. I’m not saying that’s how I saw myself. But after the skunk ape thing, others did. And I’ll admit, it flattered me. Ever since the Boar Hog Brannon fight, after which I’d been forced to hang up my boxing gloves, I’d been the nearly man, the coulda-shoulda-woulda guy. The skunk ape thing changed all that. People started looking at me different. I felt a certain pressure to live up to the legend. I mostly didn’t mind helping folks out. Teaching an abusive husband some manners, or a bullied kid some moves; it made me feel more useful than ejecting a drunk from The Henhouse. So getting Harry’s ugly fucking dog back seemed to be cinch. What was the worst could happen?
I gave a long sigh. “If I do this—”
“God bless you, Reggie!”
“I’ve got some conditions.”
His smile disappeared and his eyes became guarded. “I’m listening.”
“I want you to pay Walt what you owe for the damage to the men’s room.”
“Is that all? No problem! I’ll write him a check right now.”
“Cash.”
“I—I don’t have that kinda money lying around.”
“Sure you do. A guy like you always keeps a getaway stash.”
“A guy like me? The hell’s that supposed to mean?”
“Let’s keep this civil, huh.”
He gave a heavy sigh of resignation. “Anything else?”
“Yeah,” I said. “You’re coming with me.”
“But—but that kinda defeats the purpose of me sending you.”
“Non-negotiable, Muffet.”
He threw up his hands in surrender. “Fine!”
“And we’ll take my new truck,” I told him. “It doesn’t make the trip to Grabowski’s and back, then the deal’s off, you’re on your own.”
He wet his mustache with a nervous flick of his tongue.
“Maybe we oughta take my car?”
3.
* * *
We took old highway 9 out to Grabowski’s Gas & Zoo.
Since the interstate opened, the old highway had been left to rack and ruin. It looked like a scene from a post-apocalyptic road movie. The blacktop was cracked and cratered and sprouting weeds, and the Sticks were closing in on either side, eager to reclaim the land for Mother Nature.
Harry seemed even more surprised than me that the Jeep had made it this far.
As if worried the truck would crap out at any moment, and I’d abandon him, he was nervously prattling away about what a sweet ride she was; that he had to be crazy to just give her away; but that’s the kinda guy he was, generous to a fault—
I turned on the radio to drown out his voice. The dial came off in my hand. “Look at frigging Superman over here!” Harry chuckled. “Guy doesn’t know his own strength.” He snatched the dial from me and reattached it to the radio. “That’s nothing a little superglue won’t fix.”
Up ahead was a sun-faded sign, hanging crookedly over the highway like a hitcher’s thumb:
EAT—GAS—ZOO
“This is the place,” Harry said.
“You think?”
There sure as hell wasn’t anything else out here.
I pulled onto the cracked-dirt forecourt, kicking up a cloud of dust that swallowed the Jeep as I stopped alongside the rusted gas pumps. The dust ghosted away to reveal the filling station, a ramshackle clapboard cabin that sagged against the porch like a senior citizen clinging to his walking frame.
At the rear of the property was a corrugated sheet metal fence, painted with a mural of the animals being herded two by two into Noah’s ark. The painting had all the artistic flair of a child’s drawing stuck to a refrigerator door. The paint was peeling from the corrugated iron in the baking heat, the animals slowly fading into extinction.
There was no sign of human life anywhere.
I honked the horn for service, snatched the keys from the ignition and started climbing from the Jeep. Harry said, “You’re taking the keys?” He’d disguised himself with sunglasses and a Bigelow Baboons cap, and was ducking down in his seat, hiding his face and just generally drawing attention to himself.
“Wouldn’t want you getting itchy feet again,” I told him.
I started towards the filling station.
A scrawny old man butted outside through the screen door, hiking his suspender straps over bony shoulders. A sweat-yellowed wifebeater clung to his cadaverous frame. His hair was a wispy white rat’s-nest. His mouth was an angry pucker. With his sun-wrinkled face and scowl, he looked like a pissed-off California Raisin. But his blue eyes were clear and sharp as he sized me up.
“Mr. Grabowski?” I said.
“That you layin’ on the damn horn?” he said, in a shrill old timer’s voice. “Think I’m deaf or sumpin? Ain’t nothin’ wrong with my hearin’. It’s my legs is the problem. Damn rheaumatiz. You’ll find out, just you wait.”
He cleared his throat loudly—sounded like a penny caught in a garbage disposal—before giving me his spiel: “Grill’s broke, I don’t got no gas, and the zoo tour’s ten bucks.” Then he held out his hand expectantly.
Quite the showman.
“I came to see the chupacabra,” I told him, holding up the ad
vertising flyer with Gizmo’s picture on it.
The old man nodded like why the hell else would I be there?
“Chupacabra’s part of the ten buck tour,” he said.
“I couldn’t just see the chupacabra for a buck?”
“No,” he said firmly. “You could not.”
I should’ve had Harry front me cash for expenses.
“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon …” the old man said, like he had other paying visitors lining up.
I rooted in my pockets for my wallet.
He took a closer study of me. “Hey,” he said. “Ain’t you that skunk ape idjit?”
Infamy has its perks. It had to be worth a free roadside zoo tour.
“Reggie Levine,” I said, offering my hand. “Good to meetcha.”
He crossed his arms. “Kilt an orangutan, as I recall.”
“Sir,” I said, “I hated to do it.”
“And an itty bitty bear cub.”
“The bear cub’s just gossip. It was full grown and mean.”
So much for my free tour. I dug out ten bucks. Knowing now he was dealing with Reggie Levine, the scourge of orangutans and itty bitty bear cubs, the old man considered the cash like it was blood money. “I oughta charge you twenty.”
But despite his misgivings, he snatched the bill and pocketed it quicker than the gals at The Henhouse scalping a sucker. Then he turned towards the filling station and started shuffling inside with a soldier’s follow-me gesture.
I glanced back at Harry, ducking below the Jeep’s window line, and then followed the old man inside.
4.
* * *
The first thing that hit me was the animal stench: Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound meets Smell-O-Vision. The air shimmered with stink-waves, like heat rising from the highway on a sweltering summer’s day. Not wanting to be impolite, I tugged my shirt collar up over my nose and mouth and discreetly retched. Then there was the noise: A deafening live concert of Old McDonald’s Farm. As if that Noah’s ark mural had come to barking, bleating, bellowing life.
Critters of every description rampaged through the store’s three aisles, looting the shelves like Supermarket Sweep contestants. A possum was perched on the store counter like he was manning the cash register. Squirrels scuttled across the wire clothes rack, where GRABOWSKI GAS & ZOO tee shirts were on sale. I ducked my head beneath a flock of parrots flying laps around the room. Rabbits fucked like rabbits every which way I looked. Cats brushed against my ankles and used my shins as scratching posts. A dog was pinching a loaf in the middle aisle, glaring at me over his shoulder as if to say: You’re so interested in watching me shit, how about you wipe my ass for me? Behind the counter was an army surplus rack, where a fat pink sow was sleeping with the covers pulled up to her snout, snoring like a drunk at the end of a bender.