by Mike Resnick
“I should think you’d want a home by now,” she said. “I certainly do.”
“That sounds dangerously like a proposal,” I remarked.
“It’s not,” she replied. “Oh, every man is a potential husband, I won’t lie about that. But I’ve seen you only three times in my life. Once you had just been shot at, and the other two times you were hiding out for your life in my apartment.” She smiled. “That’s not exactly prime husband material, Eli.”
I had to agree with her. And, I thought grimly, it wasn’t exactly prime longevity material, either.
“Then, to answer your question,” I said, “of course I’d like a home. I’d like an old Tudor house in Cincinnati’s Hyde Park, and a wife and three kids and season tickets to the Reds and Bengals, and I’d even like to play golf on Sunday mornings. I’d like to be a respected member of the community and wear pin-striped suits and sit at a mahogany desk and talk about enterprises.” I sighed. “But I’m forty-three years old, and I can’t afford a house, and people keep shooting at me.”
She looked at me and smiled again. “Do you feel better now that you’ve got it all out?”
“Much,” I answered, grinning. I lit another cigarette. “What about you—are you planning on staying in Phoenix forever?”
“You sound disapproving.”
“It’s a good preparation for Hell,” I said. “I can’t see any other use for it.”
She chuckled. “I have no idea where I’m going to end up, Eli. I know breeders all across the country, so I don’t imagine I’ll be lonely wherever I go.”
“Then why are you still in Phoenix?” I asked.
“Inertia, mostly,” she said. “I suspect I’ll be leaving here one of these days.”
I couldn’t get over the feeling that she was waiting for me to suggest Cincinnati, so I changed the subject and asked her about the Phoenix Cardinals’ chances in the upcoming NFL season, which went over like a lead balloon. We spent a little time searching for interests we had in common, wasted a few minutes discussing 1940s Warner Brothers movies—she was a Bogey fan, while I preferred Greenstreet and Lorre—and finally decided it was time for dinner.
I got up a little too quickly, felt a spasm of pain shoot up my side, and clutched at my ribcage.
“What happened?” she asked solicitously.
“I just moved wrong,” I said. “I’ll be okay.”
She stared at my side for a minute. “I’ve got an idea,” she announced at last. “I don’t know if it’ll work, but it can’t hurt to try.”
Somehow I had a feeling it would hurt to try, but I just shrugged and nodded my head.
“Take your shirt off and follow me,” she said, walking to the kitchen and opening a cabinet that was filled to overflowing with nylon leashes and wire brushes and all kinds of canine ointments. At last she found what she was looking for, and withdrew a little aerosol can.
“What’s that?” I said, stopping in the middle of unbuttoning my shirt.
“Come on, Sam Spade. Off with it.”
“Not until you tell me what it is,” I said suspiciously.
“All right,” she replied. “It’s a topical anesthetic. A dog that limps for any reason is disqualified for the day from the show ring. Every now and then a dog will pick up a minor cut on his pad at the show. Usually a couple of squirts of this stuff will numb the area long enough to get him through the competition.”
I had seen football and basketball trainers spraying their charges’ hands and legs with the same kind of thing. I guessed that, like Panalog, it probably cost a tenth as much from a vet as from a doctor.
I finished taking my shirt off and she sprayed my forearms and ribs. Then she sprayed one of her fingers and dabbed it on my lip. It was cold, but it didn’t hurt.
“Feel any better?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess so.”
She walked up and put her arms around me. I flinched, but was surprised to find that there was no pain.
“Better?” she asked.
“Better,” I said. “How long did you say this stuff lasts?”
“I don’t know. An hour or two.”
I hugged her again. “Much better,” I said with a smile.
She smiled back and then we checked my lip out, and it was better, too, and a couple of minutes later we wound up in her bedroom. It turned out that the spray wasn’t all that potent, but we did a little of this and a little of that and managed to reach a relatively painless and happy conclusion without exactly resembling an illustration from the Kama Sutra. And just in time, too: about five minutes later everything started aching and stinging and I needed another application of the spray. Then I remembered that I hadn’t taken any of my eyedrops all day, so I put all four, one after the other, into my right eye, and started feeling less like a satisfied lover than a patient whose life support systems had just gone on the blink.
After that we got dressed and had a light meal: sandwiches and the ever-present fruit bowl. Bingo woke up long enough to beg at the table, then sighed and returned to his air-conditioning vent when he figured out that he wasn’t going to get any scraps. When we were done I decided it was time to call Mike Pratt, and asked Joan to drive me to a phone.
“You can call him from here,” she said. “He’s in the same area code, so it won’t show up on my bill, and if anyone is tapping his phone they’re going to hear you anyway. Just don’t tell him where you’re calling from.”
It made sense, and a minute later I put through a call to his office.
“Eli!” he exclaimed when he heard my voice. “How are you?”
“On the mend,” I said. “What did you find in the vials?”
“Measles and diphtheria vaccine,” he said.
I felt like someone had cut the floor out from under me.
“You’re sure?” I insisted. “Could your lab have made a mistake?”
“I took it to a local hospital, just to be on the safe side,” said Pratt. “They’re spoiled, of course; they were supposed to be kept refrigerated. But that’s what they were.”
“It doesn’t make any sense!” I said. “Something’s terribly wrong here.”
“What were you expecting to find?”
“I don’t know. Some kind of drug.”
“Sorry.”
“Mike, they beat the shit out of me and tried to kill me the second I found that stuff. There’s got to be a reason.”
“I wish I could come up with one,” he said. “Look, why don’t we get together and talk it out again? You can go over what happened in Mexico, and maybe I can pick up on something you’re missing.”
“Not yet,” I said. “They’ll spot me if I try to get to your place, and I don’t want you leading them to where I am now. I’ll be in touch.”
“Soon,” he said.
“Right,” I promised him.
Then I hung up the phone and walked into the living room. I sat down gingerly on a couch, put my head in my hands, and tried futilely to figure out why someone wanted to kill me for discovering that a harmless shipment of legal vaccines was exactly what it was supposed to be.
13.
I sat motionless on the couch in the living room for the better part of half an hour, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. It galled me: I just couldn’t believe I had been so wrong.
I went over every facet of the case in my mind: the dog, the two killings in Cincinnati, Binder’s death in Casa Grande, Bora pretending to be Fuentes, the blond gunman, the hospital. I had thought it all fit together very neatly—but if those vials contained vaccines, then nothing made any sense at all.
It was possible, of course, that Mike Pratt had also sold out to the enemy, but I couldn’t get myself to believe it. I still had a pair of vials left, and I considered getting them analyzed in Phoenix, but I knew what the results would be: they would contain perfectly harmless and perfectly legal measles and diphtheria vaccines.
Finally I just couldn’t think about
it any longer, so while Joan was puttering in the kitchen I took Bingo out to the back yard. He was a little too old and a little too fat to frisk and frolic like a puppy, and I was a little too old and a little too fat to frisk and frolic like a kid, so we just kind of stared at each other and decided only crazy people went out in the Phoenix sun without a reason, so we went back into the house.
He took up residence over one of the vents again, and I sat back down on the couch as Joan joined me with a pair of Margaritas in her hand. I took one, sipped at it, and placed it down on the coffee table.
“You weren’t outside very long,” she commented.
“Bingo’s smarter than he looks.”
“He’s been slowing down a lot lately,” she said sadly. “I seriously doubt that he’ll be around at this time next year.”
“Will you get another one?”
“Probably not,” she answered. “I’d like to, but I don’t exhibit any longer, and I don’t know any breeder who will let a top-notch pup go to a home that won’t show it.”
“So get a mutt.”
She shook her head. “After you’ve been around good ones, you simply can’t tolerate an ugly one. Even old Bingo, fat and lazy as he is, still has proper structure. I just couldn’t bear to look at a cow-hocked, straight-shouldered, overshot dog.”
I looked at Bingo’s whole body fluttering each time he exhaled, and I had a hard time picturing him on the cover of a dog magazine.
“Was he really that good?” I asked. “In his prime, that is?”
“He could hold his own with most of them,” she said. “I’ve had a couple of better ones, but he had the proper temperament for a show dog.”
“Aggressive?” I asked.
“Sleepy and hungry,” she replied with an amused laugh.
“I don’t think I follow you.”
“It’s simple,” she said. “A top show dog spends a couple of hundred days a year in a crate. He’ll log fifty thousand miles or more during that time, walk into a hundred strange buildings, and rub shoulders with more dogs and people than he ever dreamed existed. If he gets too excited or curious, he’ll wear himself out within a month. The top winners are alert in the ring, of course—that’s where the hungry part comes in—but most of them don’t use themselves up the rest of the time. The more relaxed they are, the longer they can maintain their condition during a long, hard campaign.”
“That should have made Bingo the top show dog in history,” I commented with a grin. “I’ve never seen a more relaxed dog.”
“He won his share,” said Joan. “I retired him four years ago, when the Nettles brought Baroness out as a puppy. I took one look at her, decided that Bingo would never beat her, and retired him while he still had his reputation.”
“I gather she was the Ruffian of dogs.”
Joan nodded. “Westminster was her most famous win, but she’s got about two hundred fifty Best of Breeds, and something like eighty Best in Shows. She was something very special, Eli.”
“So I’ve been told,” I said dryly.
“She was what every breeder strives for,” Joan continued. “There’s never been anything like her. Even you could recognize her quality.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” she apologized. “I just meant that someone with no knowledge of show dogs in general, or Weimaraners in particular, could pick her out of a crowd.”
“They all look like big gray dogs to me.”
“Not Baroness,” she said firmly. “I’ve got thirty pictures hanging on the wall. Two of them are of Baroness. I won’t tell you which one she is, and I’ll bet you can pick her out.”
I shrugged, got up, and walked over to the photographs. They were all of Weimeraners, and each of the dogs was standing next to a placard that said Best of Breed or some other award. Joan was in most of the photos, either holding a dog on a leash or wearing a judge’s badge.
I skimmed over the pictures, then stopped when I got about halfway through them. There was one dog that caught my eye. It looked so sleek and vibrant and classy that I thought it was going to jump right out of the picture.
“Is this her?” I asked, pointing to the photo.
“Of course,” she said with a smile. “I told you that you’d be able to pick her out.”
I turned back to the photos, found another dog that just seemed to stand out from the rest, and gestured to it.
“That’s her again,” said Joan. “Isn’t she gorgeous?”
I had to admit that she was. “Who are all the others?”
“Oh, a number of dogs that I bred, plus a few of the better ones I judged. It’s a courtesy for exhibitors to send photos to a judge who gives them a big win.”
“This one looks like Bingo,” I said, pointing to another photo.
“It is,” she said. “No, wait a minute. That’s his litter brother. Sometimes I get them mixed up.”
“I thought you were the expert,” I said with a smile.
“They looked a lot alike,” she said. “In fact, I won a couple of brace classes with them.”
“What’s a brace class?”
“It’s a special class where you enter two dogs, which are judged not only on their quality but also on how much alike they look.”
“I take it Baroness never won a brace class,” I remarked.
“No. Maury never had anything good enough to show with her.” She paused thoughtfully. “None of us ever did, for that matter. She was one of a kind.”
I thought about that, and then I thought some more, and suddenly there was a loud mental click! as all the pieces finally fell into place. I let out a war-whoop that would have done Geronimo proud, picked Joan up in my arms, and spun her around a couple of times, ignoring the pain from my stitches.
“Eli, what’s the matter with you?” she gasped when I put her down.
“I’ve got it!” I shouted.
“Does it have something to do with Baroness?”
“It has everything to do with Baroness!”
I raced into the kitchen and got Mike Pratt on the phone.
“What’s up, Eli?” he said when he heard my voice. “You sound excited.”
“Have you got a helicopter?” I asked.
“The Casa Grande Police?” he said. “You must be kidding.”
“Well, make arrangements to get one. You and I are going on a trip.”
“What about your playmates?” he said. “I thought they were still out to get you.”
“I was wrong,” I said. “They’re going to be running interference for me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will. Have a six-pack of beer handy, too. I’ll be by in an hour or so.”
I hung up the phone and turned back to Joan.
“I’ve got to rent a car,” I said. “Is there a Hertz or an Avis near here?”
“Yes,” she said. “But I thought it wasn’t safe for you to be seen.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “I guarantee no one is going to try to stop me from reaching Casa Grande.”
“Then why can’t I drive you?”
“I didn’t say I was out of danger,” I explained. “Only that no one would stop me from seeing Pratt. It’ll be a lot safer for you if no one knows we’ve been together.”
“Will you be coming back?” she asked.
“Not right away,” I said.
“Soon?” she persisted.
“I just don’t know. Cheer up: I’m unacceptable husband material, remember?”
“I can be fond of you even if you’re a lousy catch,” she replied seriously.
She drove me to a local Hertz, where I rented a Thunderbird and took off for Casa Grande. It was the first time I’d felt safe in days. When I arrived Pratt was waiting for me, and he ushered me right into his office. He even had a couple of hamburgers there to go along with the beer.
“They really worked you over, didn’t they?” he said. “Have a seat, Eli.”
/> “Did you get the helicopter?”
He nodded. “They won’t go out at night, and it’ll be sundown in another hour or so. But they’ll be ready first thing in the morning.”
“Then I’ll just have to spend the night here, I guess. I’m probably being watched, so have your lab analyze these,” I said, pulling out my last two vials.
“You think there’s something in them?” he asked, taking them from me.
“Yeah. Measles and diphtheria vaccine.”
He frowned. “Then I don’t understand.”
“You will,” I said. “But first have your lab go to work on them, just to keep any sightseers happy.”
He shrugged and took them out of the office. I bit into my hamburger, took a swig of beer, looked out the window at the dull brown landscape, and started counting the hours before I could go back to Cincinnati. Pratt returned a minute later, uncapped a beer, and looked across his desk at me.
“Well?” he said.
“Nice hamburger,” I said with a grin.
“Stop looking so proud of yourself and tell me what you know. To begin with, why did you risk your life to bring me a batch of vaccine?”
“I was suckered,” I said. “They wanted me to bring it to you. That’s why no one tried to stop me from driving down here.”
“You were with your dog show judge?”
“Yes.”
“I guessed as much, but I didn’t want to ask on the phone.” He paused. “Okay, Eli—why were you suckered into stealing vaccines?”
“So I wouldn’t guess what was really going on.”
“And what is really going on?”
“I’m still not sure yet, but we’ll know sometime tomorrow,” I said. “All I know now is that it’s a hell of a lot bigger than a dope ring. I should have figured it out when I escaped so easily down in Monterrey.”
“From what your doctor told me, it wasn’t exactly what I’d call easy.”
“These guys are professionals. I could never have gotten away from them in the shape I was in unless they wanted me to.”
“And why did they want you to?”
“So I’d go to the hospital and steal the vaccines. Once I got my hands on them I never saw another person following me. I was too scared to notice it at the time, but I was absolutely safe from the minute I escaped. I hid less than a quarter-mile from the house where they worked me over, and no one found me. I broke into the drug storeroom of a hospital and nobody saw me. I swiped a car and no one stopped me. I spent more than twelve hours in Marcus’s office with a stolen car parked right in front of it, and no one came to get me. I knew everything I needed to know to solve this thing one day after I got to Monterrey, and since they couldn’t know I’d be too dumb to put it all together, they laid down one hell of a false trail for me.”