Hogdoggin'

by Anthony Neil Smith

  Perry said, “Come on, baby.”

  Fawn stood her ground. “I’ll bet if I stand across the street and wait, all we’d see is nothing. Something weird’s going on.”

  Perry grabbed Fawn by the elbow, pulled her a couple of steps towards the door. “We’ll deal with it later. We’ve got to go, remember?”

  Fawn pulled away again. “You know, it’s pretty convenient that the fucker makes a phone call and suddenly these two show up. Like, really, the FBI’s going to send a preppie and a bull dyke over in a muscle car? You buying this?”

  Colleen’s muscles tightened all over. Bull dyke? This tubby white trash bitch wanted to talk shit about her like she herself is the Queen of the Fucking Nile?

  She stepped up beside McKeown, hand on top of her holster, unsnapped with a fingernail, ready to go. “Ma’am, please, that’s unnecessary. We all have our jobs to do, and it’s time for you to leave the premises.”

  McKeown reached over like he was going to touch her arm, thought better of it, but sounding like a diplomat all the sudden. “Hold on, hold on, okay, so that’s procedure, okay Miss? The deputy is going by the book, all right?”

  All in the training. Why didn’t Colleen think of that? She was making things worse all because this whale with too much blush and mascara was pissed off that she thought the officers who she had just lied to had now lied to her. Yeah, that was a good point. Colleen eased her hand away from the holster.

  She said, “No need for escalation. Just a precaution. You’re not the problem here.”

  Perry stood frozen between Fawn and the door. Colleen could nearly hear his thoughts, so obvious they were sweating through his pores—paint fumes, beer, panic. Ditch her and run. Ditch her and run. Ditch her and run.

  So obvious, Colleen said it out loud before she realized. “Ditch her and run.”

  Perry, hands over his head like he’d heard an air raid siren. “Jesus, what?”

  McKeown, palms out like Jesus again. “Wait, no one’s telling anyone to run.”

  You could see it in Fawn’s face. Darkening, brows furrowing, cheeks puffing with air. She reached under her shirt, her waistband.

  Colleen reached too.

  *

  Fawn had been fucked over enough for one day. One long horrible day. And it came to a head when she was sitting at that table in the bar next to Perry while these agents, if that’s who they really were—damn, that chick sure didn’t look like one to Fawn—whispered over the bar. Perry was ready to lose it. He wasn’t breathing so good and he told her, “I want to puke.”

  She soothed him, rubbed his thigh, told him to stick with the story, except if they asked about the wrists or the shit on his chest. Say he was already like that. Stick to it like a chant. But don’t let them go into the basement. What really got to her was that she was feeling sorry for Perry again. Right then, Fawn wanted nothing more than to go celebrate their reward. They would split it, sure, but why not put it together? Buy a great house, get their lives together instead of wallowing in meth and paint cans and all the boredom that kept her fucking and drinking like it was a marathon but not getting anywhere. Get the reward check, then go home and start over like the past five, six years had never happened.

  But the more she watched Perry—skinny, haggard, gold-stained lip and oily hair, scared to the point of pissing his pants—the more she wanted to take the full reward for herself and move to the Cities. Or, hell, even farther. Didn’t her high school friend Pat send her postcards from the beach in North Carolina one summer? The most beautiful place she’d ever seen. Maybe there. Fuck splitting the money. Fuck “fair“. Fuck Perry.

  What would she do when she got there?

  Something different. Didn’t matter. Even the crappiest job in Carolina was better than being rich out in the bean fields.

  So how to ditch Perry then?

  Simple. Go home, fuck the shit out of him, and leave with the check when he fell asleep. He wouldn’t come looking for her. Too much work to even consider that. Plus, Fawn wouldn’t leave a trail. By the time she felt like telling her parents where she’d run off to, Perry would’ve sunken back into his cheap life in his cheap trailer, huffing fumes and sometimes selling dope to get by another few weeks. Maybe there would be some regret, a little righteous anger, even, or a tiny desire for revenge. Never enough to get him off the couch and on a plane. Just keep rubbing his leg until it’s time to go.

  Then the preppie fruit Special Agent—he thinks he’s hiding it, but Fawn knew he was queer the first five minutes—came back over to tell them, pretty much, there wasn’t going to be any reward today.

  When then? Days? Weeks? Months? How long would she have to play nice with her ex, tied to her again like a brick on the ankle while she was trying to swim for shore.

  And where was the proof anyway? Not to mention the back-up. There two miraculously show up to save the day? Not likely.

  That’s when Fawn stopped giving a shit any more. No matter which direction she swam, which guy she rode, which plan she hatched, it was like she had a built-in Fail circuit ready to blow the very second things were looking up. Why? Wasn’t she a good person? I mean, no saint, but not bad. I treat people okay. So why?

  She couldn’t even speak her mind. She tried telling those people how she really felt, and all she got from the preppie was lies, and the butch chick wanted to draw a gun on her.

  If there was no fucking reward and no fucking escape except for out that door with Perry…no, not an option. They had underestimated her. Same as Lafitte had underestimated her. The whole world kept on passing her by without a second glance. But there she was all the sudden, surprise, surprise! She would have Perry tie them up and then call the real cops, the real FBI, settle all this and get a real check dropped in her hand. Perry can have a third. Don’t even give him the illusion of this being a fair split or that they had a chance to hook up again or any of it. Just a nice “It was fun, but I’ve got to go now.”

  How was she going to pull that off? Well, that was easy. The answer was right there in her waistband, courtesy of Lafitte.

  You do this, you’ll be a hero. No one can ever ignore you again.

  She grinned a little.

  Exactly.

  *

  Colleen shot Fawn in the face. Fast, too. She’d barely freed the Glock from her pants when Colleen went into gear. Was already mid-recoil when she thought What if it’s not a gun? Right above Fawn’s left eye, not quite dead center. The .45 slug exploded out the back of her head. Blood and brain sprayed across Perry’s pants and shoes. He didn’t stick around to gawk or puke, either. Colleen took a shot at him, too, but missed when he ducked and flung the door open and took off. Guy didn’t even try for his Mustang. Just a flat-out run. She was aiming for him through the doorframe, but McKeown batted her arm down before she could squeeze the trigger. He was yelling at her, too. She hadn’t even noticed.

  “The fuck are you doing? Aw, fuck! Jesus Christ!”

  Colleen was still in all ringing ears and the trance that went along with it. She’d never actually killed anyone before. Only dreamed about it. How did it feel?

  Not so bad. The bitch deserved it. Made her a little less angry with Lafitte, too.

  Then she thought, How would it have felt three days ago?

  McKeown drew his own piece—took him long enough—and approached Fawn’s crumpled body, kicked the loose Glock a few feet away, then crouched beside it. He took a deep breath, then stood. Didn’t say anything for a minute. Colleen knew it was a real gun then.

  She wouldn’t need to defend herself. Cut and dry. Save an FBI agent’s life and you’re cool like that.

  Saved his? Saved your own, how about it?

  Colleen sniffed. Didn’t matter. She and Nate used to tell each other before shifts, “Come home.” Always “Come home.” Didn’t matter any more if she came home. Maybe she didn’t even want to. Never sleep in that bed again. As many different beds as possible. Wear that ring and tell any number of men i
n bars she was married, let them think what they wanted. Dispatch fuckers with guns and walk away, simplifying justice. Getting ahead of herself, though. One at the time.

  McKeown was still staring at the gun, frozen in place. Colleen walked behind the bar. Lafitte had moved a bit. The gunshot must have broken through his haze. His head was turned, his arm stretched out. His breath was louder, steady.

  Colleen still had her gun out. Never occurred to her to re-sheath it. Maybe Perry would come back blazing. Yeah, right. She pointed it at Lafitte, squinted down the sight. Noticed her hand wasn’t shaking. Wavering a little, like a skyscraper on a windy day. Dead center of the ear.

  “Hey,” McKeown said.

  Colleen looked up.

  “What are you doing?”

  She shrugged, kept the gun on Lafitte. “Nothing.”

  McKeown repeated, “Nothing,” and stared off to the side. Hands on his hips. He shifted his weight, one knee to the other.

  Colleen imagined it: one gunshot. McKeown would look shocked, go all speechless, then just tell her, “Go on, get out of here. I’ll handle it.” Because that’s what happened to women in movies who made good on revenge. Except Farrah Fawcett, okay, but the others were given a free pass.

  She glanced down at Lafitte one more time. Shit. He’d had a really fucking bad day. She laid her gun on the bar. “What now? Do we need to call somebody?”

  McKeown shook his head. “Help me get him into a chair or something.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  Run. Goddamn. Run, don’t look back—fuck, why’d you look back? Just go.

  Perry knew she was dead. He’d seen the back of her head burst like a melon. Even if he’d never seen it in real life before, it was close enough to the movies and he knew without a doubt. If they could just shoot Fawn like that, without warning or shouting or anything, then there was no way the yuppie and dyke were cops. No fucking way.

  He was out the door and in the dust so fast, he didn’t even stop when he stumbled on the asphalt and skinned his hands. Pebbles and glass and shit. He pumped double-time. Fuck. Left his car. Fuck. If they wanted him, they had their car. Fuck. It was no contest.

  Cool air on his sweaty skin gave him goosebumps and cramped his stomach. He looked back again before heading into the ditch, tripping and hitting the dirt face first. If it were summer, he could hide in the stalks. But all around was open prairie, already harvested, black dirt churned up top. He was far enough down the rise that he couldn’t see the bar any more, even though it was a stone’s throw. Across the street, train tracks ran parallel for a good fifty or so miles, he knew. The closest trees were a windbreak for a farm house. Maybe a mile away. Better than waiting for a train. He could do it. He could make it. Cut across the field, even if they did follow. They wouldn’t dare drive out into the field, right?

  Perry pushed himself to his knees, heard an engine whining from somewhere. Not the Chevelle. Something more…open. Hard to explain. He didn’t have time to figure it out, more afraid than he’d ever been of anything in his life. Fuck, he wanted to huff right then and there. No, wanted his head clear. Only reason he’d started huffing in the first place was to control the nerves without having to go to a fucking doctor like he was some mental freak. He started coughing at even the thought of doctors, dentists. More than that, too. Spiders. Airplanes. Calling people on the phone. Public restrooms. He even got nervous thinking about sex, thinking he might blow too soon or disappoint with how small he was, and maybe that’s why he’d felt comfortable with Fawn. She’d said he was just the right size. She’d stomp spiders in his trailer. She’d deal with bill collectors when they called. The things you take for granted until it’s too late.

  He’d caught a last glance of her eyes as she fell. Stunned, wide, accusing. Would he see them every night now? She’d be a ghost in dreams. She’d be dead no matter what. It’s why he got nervous around corpses, too. One look at his grandma in her coffin, shrunk away to nothing, all waxy-like, and that’s the only way he was ever able to remember her any more.

  The engine whine was louder. Motorcycle. Perry could make it out, a big hog. Like it was armored, all Mad Max-ed. Mounted by this monster, man, biiig guy. Wearing goggles but no helmet, just a bandana. Coal black hair like a mane shooting out the bottom. He wore a suede sportcoat, weird looking on him, like he was going to burst the seams out of the shoulders. Jeans were dark, looked new like he’d bought them at a Wal Mart twenty minutes ago. Boots were old, though, and dirty as shit.

  Right behind him was a hot little number, blonde, in chaps and a fur jacket. Perry thought it screamed Catwoman. She rested her chin on the giant’s shoulder, no doubt to keep the flying hair from slapping her in the face. Hugged him tight. Coming fast.

  Perry’s arms were up and waving before he thought much about it. He wandered into the middle of the road. At least with some company he didn’t feel so vulnerable to the killers he’d escaped from. Let them come now. No way they’d kill him with an audience. Maybe they had a cell phone. Ring up the Troopers. He had his proof about Lafitte, and he had Fawn dead at the bar, probably still bleeding all over the carpet so much that the killers couldn’t clean it up this fast. Even if there wasn’t any reward money in it, Perry thought it was still worth it to turn it all over, no more vigilante bullshit. He was clean, no spatter, no powder burns. For the first time in his life, he wanted the cops to question him, oh please please please.

  Waving hard now. If the biker wanted around him, he’d have to swerve. Perry thinking, Give me a chance. Hell, I’d stop for you. The little voice in the back of his mind that coughed when he thought about airplanes said, No you wouldn’t. Only reason you went after Lafitte was because you had the element of surprise.

  Shit. What if these two were part of the same gang as the killers? What if Lafitte had an army of thugs coming to his rescue?

  You still want them to stop?

  His arms flagged some and he thought about waving the bike off and making a run for the farm house. Maybe they’d get the hint. Or maybe they had nothing to do with Lafitte but would still stop and chase him and beat him, rob him.

  Perry felt like someone was tightening a noose around his neck. Hard time breathing. Like he was going to throw up. Coughed it away, coughed hard. The bike was right on him now and Perry couldn’t make his feet move.

  The bike eased to a stop in front of him. The engine wound down, off. The big man was staring, waiting. Perry noticed the girl was holding some sort of electronic thing, yellow, had a screen on it. Not an I-pod.

  Perry sucked in air, rambled it all out. “I need a cell phone, please. I need to call the police. Someone…someone got shot. Please, call Nine One One. My grandpa’s bar, back that way…” Took a few breaths while limply pointing behind him. “We’ve got a terrorist in there, but he’s American, and his friends came to get him, said they were cops…shot…shot my…Fawn.”

  The big guy said, “What’s a Fawn? Like Bambi?”

  “No, no. She’s…was…I dated her, and we’re friends, but I think she’s dead now. They shot her. God, they shot her.” Perry couldn’t stand up any more. Sinking to his knees, feeling around until his fingertips touched the road. Fawn dead. Perry had run away. Had to live with that picture, the hole in her head. The open eyes. Fucking dead.

  He said, “Please, a phone? Or just, I don’t know. Just…God.” Then he was crying and trying hard to stop by swallowing, but that hurt his throat and he cried more because he’d never been more scared. Scared of being scared. Waiting for that fucking Chevelle to show up again. Awful. Pussy. Should he say fucking and pussy right before he died? Maybe apologize to God for the bad things he’d done. He didn’t know how. Didn’t even know how bad he was compared to anyone else. The paint was bad, everyone said so. But he wasn’t hurting people with it. He wasn’t forcing it. He sold drugs to people who wanted them. Okay, that’s bad. Sorry about the drugs. And sex before marriage. Still, he had loved her, so that couldn’t be so bad. Just in case, Sorry about sl
eeping with Fawn. Because “sleeping with” is nicer than the word he shouldn’t say before he died.

  The big man told his girl to get off the bike, and she did, and then he did the same. Pulled a thin cell phone from his breast pocket, flipped it open. He looked down at Perry. “Got a couple bars. Wait, one keeps flickering. Still, one bar. Relax a minute, man. Keep it together.”

  Perry nodded, tried to stop his teeth from chattering by grinding them back and forth. He was cold, colder than he should have been, like it was snowing even though it wasn’t. The girl, Jesus, tight jeans. He liked those jeans. Tight jeans and that cheap fur, fake for sure. Perry thought Jamie Lee Curtis in Trading Places, but better looking in the face. Nicer hair. The girl calmed him down but got him hyped up too. Not now. Didn’t need sex nerves on top of “gonna die” nerves. But it was okay. Guy had a phone. Guy was cool. The Chevelle hadn’t shown up. Yeah, that was okay. Only thing he didn’t like was the big revolver sticking out of the big guy’s waistband. Perry got a glimpse when the wind whipped the coat open just enough. Guy caught it, buttoned it. No need to freak. That was common out here. Lots of people had guns. No problem.

  Perry spoke up. “Please, Nine One One. Hurry.”

  Guy looked over at him like he’d forgotten Perry was there. Grinned all weird, face squinching like Santa Claus if he were a bouncer. The guy stared at his phone another moment before closing it, snugging it back into his pocket. He watched the girl then, walking in a circle out in front of the bike out past Perry, who had to turn his head to see. His stomach had cramped up, paralyzed him. Couldn’t keep them both in his field of sight without moving, and he didn’t think he could move without shitting his pants.

  After watching the girl a minute, the big guy said, “This it?”

  The girl held out the little yellow gizmo. “Yeah, we’re close.”