by Neal Wooten
She stopped the car.
“Good evening,” the man said in a gruff tone.
Glenda nodded, although it didn’t really seem to be a good evening at all.
The man walked around the car looking carefully into each window, shining his flashlight into every crevice. After a full circle, he brought his attention back to the driver. “What’s your business here?”
Glenda tried hard to keep her voice from cracking. “I’m here to pick up a case of spinach for Popeye.”
The man stepped back with a quick, sharp nod. “Turn left at the next entrance and follow it to the end.”
Glenda did as instructed and turned left at the next road. An old sign that read “Keep Out” dangled from its broken metal post. She followed the road toward the end, trying hard to avoid the numerous potholes and debris. As she neared the last warehouse, she could see other cars and a faint glow coming from behind the building. Parking her car in line with the others, she got out and followed the light. It was a clear, humid summer night, and the stars managed to shout their presence away from the smog and lights of downtown.
As she rounded the corner of the building, she saw the source of the light. It was coming from the opening of a large black tent. Several people were standing in line to get in, so she filed in at the back of the line. A young couple dressed in formal wear took their spot in line behind her. Several of the people were well dressed, which surprised Glenda, but she was glad she had borrowed the black dress and high-heeled shoes she now wore. It was also a good thing she had practiced walking in the heels earlier in the day, which proved to be amazingly harder than she thought it would be.
She was a very coordinated woman with the strength of most men, but her calves were killing her from concentrating on walking without falling. She couldn’t wait for this to be over so she could shed the girlie wear for jeans and work boots.
“Place everything in the tray,” the man at the entrance said. He was also a very large man with a pistol sticking out of his jeans.
Glenda placed her small purse in the tray and started to walk forward. The man tapped her on the arm. When she looked back, he was patting his right ear.
“Oh sorry.” Glenda removed her Bluetooth and placed it in the tray with her purse. The man motioned for her to go through the metal detector as he looked inside her purse and saw the three stacks of twenty-dollar bills. He smiled and handed her the purse and phone.
There was a chain-link fence set up in the middle of the tent with one gate on the near side close to the tent entrance. Bleachers adorned the fence on the other three sides and were already nearly full. Glenda saw a bare spot on the top row and squeezed through the seated spectators.
After a few more folks arrived, they closed the entrance to the tent. The man who had directed her through the metal detector proved also to be the emcee. He strolled to the middle of the fenced area.
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.” His voice was bold and loud. He didn’t even need a microphone. “We have four bouts tonight, so get ready for a wild ride.”
He’s definitely a showman, Glenda thought. She placed the Bluetooth back in her ear and turned it on. Moving her head in different directions, she took in her surroundings.
“What are you doing?”
Glenda looked at the man sitting to her right. He was not dressed in formal wear. He was stocky and wore a stained T-shirt that had once been white. Thinking quickly, she said, “I was wondering why they don’t have a hole in the top of this tent for all this smoke.” She coughed and waved her hand in front of her face.
The man stared at her for a few seconds, took a huge puff from his cigar, shook his head, and turned his attention back to the makeshift ring.
“The first fight tonight is between two undefeated monsters,” the emcee continued.
Glenda scoffed. Of course they’re undefeated, moron, she thought.
The emcee raised his arms wide above his head. “Weighing in at 105 pounds, let’s hear it for Satan’s Spawn.”
The crowd cheered and clapped as a young man walked into the ring with his massive pit bull on a leash. Glenda clapped and cheered too. The dog was majestic, solid brown with a huge head full of scars. Satan’s Spawn pulled on the leash, growling and flashing his fangs to the amusement of those in the stands.
“Now for his opponent,” the emcee said. “Weighing in at 98 pounds, give it up for Thor.”
Another young man walked into the ring with his pit bull, a beautiful white dog with a million tiny black specks. Like his opponent, his head and face also gave testament to many battles.
“Place your bets,” the emcee concluded as he left the ring and the two guys fought to keep their pits at bay.
Please hurry, Glenda thought as the bookies walked through the bleachers collecting bets. “Oh, forty dollars on Satan’s Spawn,” Glenda said as she handed the guy two twenty-dollar bills. The man wrote out a slip and handed it to her.
Glenda swallowed hard and her anxiety grew. Please, please, please hurry, she thought again.
“No more bets,” shouted the emcee, now outside of the ring, as the bookies worked their way out of the stands. “Let’s get ready to rumble.” He took a whistle and put it to his lips.
The two dogs pulled against their restrainers, their lungs heaving as their flesh expanded and contracted around their rib cages, their mouths starting to foam in anticipation.
The whistle sounded and the dog men unleashed their hounds. The two magnificent creatures met in the middle of the ring on their hind legs as their jaws sought out the other’s weaknesses. Fur flew in this barbaric display, and the barbarians in formal wear cheered them on.
Glenda closed her eyes and tilted her head downward and said a silent prayer. It was answered. The tent became flooded with flashing red and blue lights.
“You’re surrounded,” a voice over a megaphone announced. “Come out in single file with your hands above your head. If you have a firearm, hold it high above your head or you will be shot on sight.”
Fear and panic gripped the inhabitants of the tent as the two men leashed their dogs. Some thought to escape the police by crawling under the tent in the back, but the officer wasn’t bluffing about the tent being surrounded.
Glenda followed the line of spectators out into the opening. The men in charge of the event, including the first one she saw at the guard shack and the two dog men, were placed in police cars and escorted away. The people there to watch and bet on the fights were all loaded into a large police van.
Before Glenda entered, an officer cuffed her, took her phone and bag and put them into a satchel, scanned the bar code on the handcuffs and the satchel, then tossed the evidence to another officer. He grabbed Glenda by the arm, and not gently, and shoved her into the back of the van. Glenda couldn’t help but smile, because she didn’t even know paddy wagons still existed.
A very uncomfortable thirty minutes passed before they arrived at the police station. Glenda, along with all the other spectators, was taken to a holding cell. It was an open cell with a wide-open stainless-steel commode. The walls were painted cinder blocks with ink scribbles all over them. The room was poorly lit and smelled of urine. The front desk was only about thirty feet away, where police officers went about their duties without even a glance in their direction.
“I want my phone call,” one person yelled.
“I want my attorney,” yelled another.
The officers ignored them.
Glenda took a seat on a long bench against the back wall of the cell.
“Can you believe this crap?”
She turned to see her old friend in the stained T-shirt.
“You better have a good lawyer,” he said.
Glenda shook her head. As she leaned forward to place her head in her hands, her long, curly red hair flowed down, covering most of her face. She was a strikingly handsome woman of Native American descent. Almost six feet tall, her tan and muscular body gave her a formidable appeara
nce in the borrowed black dress.
Everyone looked up as the keys clanged against the tumblers in the door to the cell.
“All right,” an officer said. “Who wants to go first?”
Several people raised their hands and jumped to their feet, including the guy beside Glenda.
“You there,” the officer yelled. “Let’s start with you, honey. Come on, get off your butt.”
Glenda looked up and saw the female officer pointing at her. She got up and followed her out and down a long hallway. They passed the fingerprinting table, mug shot area, several smaller offices, and a water cooler. The officer led her to an interrogation room and motioned for her to sit at the table. He then took off her cuffs and left the room.
Several moments passed as Glenda wondered if anyone was behind the one-way mirror. Finally the door opened and Sergeant Marcus Olazaba walked in carrying Glenda’s satchel with her Bluetooth and purse. He was a very clean-cut Latino man in his early thirties.
“Do you have any idea how much trouble you’re in?” he asked as he placed his fists on the table and stared across at Glenda. “Well, do you?”
Glenda shrugged. “I’m sorry.”
The sergeant shook his head. “You are loco. That’s what you are. You do know that, right? And for God’s sake, take off that stupid wig.”
Glenda smiled and pulled off the red wig, revealing her long, straight gray hair. She ran her fingers through the strands where it had been compressed by the wig.
“How do you think I felt,” Sergeant Olazaba continued, “to come to work this evening only to have the chief inform me that Miss Glenda Eagle had sent an e-mail saying she was going undercover tonight to a dogfighting event and would be sending us the information and pictures shortly?”
Glenda gritted her teeth. “You told me to let you know about any such events. That’s all I was doing.”
“No, no,” corrected the sergeant. “I said to let us know if you had information, not to take this information and infiltrate the organization yourself. You could have been killed.” He opened the satchel and pulled out the Bluetooth. “What if they had discovered this was a camera uploading a live feed to the Internet?” He opened her purse and took one of the stacks of twenty-dollar bills out. “Or what if they had looked more closely and saw these were only ones with a twenty on each side?”
Glenda sat still. She knew rhetorical questions when she heard them and wasn’t about to make things worse by answering.
“Are you not even going to answer me?” he snapped.
“I’m sorry,” Glenda offered weakly. “If you need to charge me with a crime, I understand. I just couldn’t not try to help those dogs.”
Sergeant Olazaba started to say something else, but the door to the interrogation room opened. He quickly stood at attention as the chief walked in.
Chief Jackson walked in and sat at the chair across from Glenda. He stared at her with dark eyes and a seriously upset expression. He was physically intimidating even without the expression, a tall, lean, African American police officer with twenty-three years on the force. He sported three gunshot scars: two from the military and one from the line of duty. “Well, well,” he said mockingly. “If it ain’t Sherlock Holmes. No, wait—James Bond. What in the hell were you thinking?”
Glenda could only shrug her shoulders.
“You’re lucky we don’t throw you under the jail.” It wasn’t an original line, but effective. He looked at the sergeant. “Should we throw the book at her, Sarge?”
“Yes, sir. I think we should. But she’d probably just throw it back.”
The chief didn’t even crack a smile, just continued to stare at her.
“Can I say something?” Glenda asked.
“No!” they both shouted.
The chief finally got up and walked to the door. As he opened it, he turned to leave a few parting words. “If I ever read an e-mail like that from you again, I’ll . . . I’ll . . . Well, I better not ever receive an e-mail like that from you again. Am I clear?”
Glenda nodded. “Yes, sir.”
One last glance up at the sergeant and the chief walked out.
Sergeant Olazaba shook his head and sat in the chair across from her, the same chair the chief had just vacated. “Look, I know you love these dogs. So do I. I admire all the good you do for them up at your rescue. I just don’t want to see anything happen to you. What would all your dogs do without you?”
Glenda hadn’t even looked at it from that point of view. Her shelter, the Pit Stop, stayed maxed out at almost one thousand pit bulls. She knew each one personally and loved each one uniquely. “You’re right,” she said. “It was foolish. Next time I’ll give you the information.”
The sergeant looked at her with disbelief, then laughed. “We better leave it on that note. I don’t think you’ve ever agreed with me before. Now go on, get the heck out of here and go home.”
Chapter Three
“Shark!”
Erique Sarpong and his fourteen-year-old son, Emmanuel, stared across the small wooden table for a full second before dropping their playing cards and running to the back of the boat, both of their folding chairs tumbling to the deck. This was the general direction of the scream, but no one was visible, so they weren’t sure who had called out.
Five years ago, when the tourist industry began to boom in North Africa, Erique had converted his fishing operation along the crowded beaches of Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania, into a charter business, taking rich foreign tourists out scuba diving. He cleaned up his old twenty-five-foot boat, added a fresh coat of paint, refinished the decking, and gave her a name: The Blue Horizon. It proved to be a smart move, as the money he made doing this far outweighed what he squeezed out of the local fish market. It was much easier work, and he could actually take days off to enjoy time with his family. But in all those years, this was the first time he had ever heard this word.
“Where are they, Papa?”
Erique scanned the surface of the water, the small swells rocking the boat gently. He stepped over the transom and onto the diving platform that he had built and added to his boat. Bracing himself with one hand on the large outboard motor, he squatted down as if trying to peer into the sea, his strong, thin frame flexing the muscles beneath his dark skin, which reflected in the bright sunshine. Beads of sweats began falling from his shaved head. “I don’t know. Keep your eyes open.”
A hand breached the surface twenty feet behind the boat. Without thinking, Erique dove in and began to swim toward the diver. As he neared the person, he could taste the blood in the water. He grabbed on to the diver’s hands and pulled them to him. The diver panicked and tried to use Erique, who was not wearing a life jacket, as a flotation device. Luckily Erique was a strong swimmer and managed to keep them both above water and began swimming back toward the boat. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he felt something brush against his leg.
Emmanuel, still in a state of shock himself, wiped the tears from his eyes and grabbed the foam lifesaver, climbed over the transom, and threw it out in their direction while holding on to the attached rope. As his father latched on, he pulled them quickly to the boat and helped his father get the diver onto the platform. It was the woman diver.
“Where is your husband?” Erique asked as the woman climbed over into the boat and collapsed onto the deck.
She took off her mask, the fear still clearly visible in her eyes. “I don’t know. We were not together. A shark came out of nowhere and hit me from behind. I never saw it.” She didn’t look at Erique when she spoke. She didn’t appear to be speaking to anyone in particular.
As Erique helped her remove the gear, he noticed the air line coming from her tank had been severed. Then he noticed the blood cascading down her wet suit into his boat. “You’re bleeding. Did the shark bite you?”
The woman didn’t respond. Her eyes were now void of understanding, as if Erique were not speaking English.
“Keep an eye out for the husb
and,” Erique instructed his son as he started running his hands over the woman’s shoulders, arms, and back, searching for a wound. As he caressed the back of her left arm, she grimaced in pain. He lifted her arm, looked around, and saw the bite mark. It had penetrated the wet suit, and several punctures seemed to be pretty deep. He got up and went to the controls of the boat and retrieved the first-aid kit. “Help her take the stuff off,” he said to Emmanuel.
Emmanuel did as his father instructed. As he began to help her off with the suit, he looked out over the water. “Papa, there he is.”
Erique followed the direction of his son’s finger and saw the other diver, the woman’s husband, swimming on the surface about fifty feet off the starboard side. He appeared to be fine, so Erique squatted down again to see to the woman’s wound.
“Look!” Emmanuel yelled. “Dolphins.”
Erique breathed a sigh of relief. If the shark was still around, the dolphins would protect the diver still in the water. As he began to clean the bite wound, however, he was shocked. It was not a shark bite. The puncture wounds indicated a much narrower jawline than a shark. Maybe a barracuda? he thought. No, it wasn’t a barracuda either, but there was something familiar about the shape of the bite.
“How is she?” Emmanuel asked as he knelt down beside them.
Erique continued to cleanse the wound and then began to apply a bandage.
“That’s not a shark bite, is it?” his son asked.
Suddenly it became clear as a rush of fear and disbelief overcame Erique. He stood up and stared out at the diver swimming toward them but still thirty feet away. He could see three dorsal fins from the dolphins to the diver’s left and two more approaching from the right. They were closing in fast.
“Start the boat,” he said.
Emmanuel heard but was frozen as it also dawned on him what was happening. He looked back at the woman’s wound and then at the dolphins who were heading straight for the diver. They were not going to be of assistance. As they neared, one by one, they sped up and rammed the diver.