From Russia With Fur

by Rene Fomby

  When we ran into Ike outside the Dead Fish Bar yesterday morning, he said he’d gone into business with Fisheye, and they’d set up shop in the alley behind Mullin’s Grocery way out here in Oak Park, in the western suburbs of Chicago. I got lucky hitting all of the right trains, so it took me less than two hours to make the trip out, pulling the old trick Tony taught me about walking onto the train like I belonged there, and sitting halfway between two sets of humans so each of them would think I belonged to the other. It’s just not all that hard to fool a human if you give it half a try.

  As I make the last turn into the alley behind the grocery, I’m not really sure what to expect. The first time I was here, Fisheye was running a hand-to-mouth operation digging moldy food out of the grocery’s dumpster to sell on the street to cats desperate enough to eat just about anything. So when I turn the corner and feast my eyes on what he and Ike have made of the old salvage business, I have to blink twice to make sure I’m seeing things right.

  The entire alleyway is a bustle of activity, the whole place swarming with cats running this way and that, tending to their various roles and responsibilities in Ike and Fisheye’s new catering business. And not stray cats, mind you, but plump, well-groomed felines—although knowing Ike and Fisheye, I’ll bet most of the team were originally recruited right off the streets. Giving a job to those who needed it the most. It’s just the way those two cats roll.

  I don’t really know where to start, but I see a sales counter of sorts off to my left near the old dumpster, so I make my way there.

  “Hey,” I tell the Calico behind the counter. “Are Ike or Fisheye around here somewhere?”

  The Calico gives me a quick, appraising look. “You’re a dog.”

  Obviously, I’m dealing with a real rocket scientist, here. “Yeah, like you said, I’m a dog. Woof woof. And Ike and the Fish are old buddies of mine. Thing is, I have something pressing I need to talk to them about. They around?”

  Calico pauses a long moment to size me up again, then flicks a paw in the air, and a brownish Tabby suddenly appears out of nowhere.

  “Franklin, this here—dog—says he needs to talk with the boss.” He pauses again, glancing back at me. “Uh—name?”

  “Moose,” I say, keeping it all tight and to the point.

  “Huh. Moose! Figures!” he snorts, then flicks his paw again and the Tabby speeds off into the maelstrom of catering cats. It only takes a minute before I see Ike striding our way, parting the crowd like Moses at the Red Sea, his head and shoulders rising well above all the chaos surrounding him. The grin he’s wearing could light up the entire alley.

  “Moose! Good to see you! Twice in two days, what a treat! What’s up, little buddy?”

  “Hey, Ike. I—I need to ask you a favor.” I guess I should have led with a little small talk, but time is critical right now. We’ve got to pull off our ambush before Macy’s closes up for the night, and even if Ike agrees to help out with our plan, we’re still a good two hours away from downtown.

  “Any favor for you would be an honor for me, my frien’. How can I help you?”

  He motions me over to a quieter corner behind the dumpster, which is now looking all spiffed up and smelling like fresh-baked bread. Business must be going really good for the two of them these days.

  “Ike, sorry to have to drop this on you all of a sudden, but—” Quickly I laid out the situation, and the plan to lure the Russians and the CCs to Macy’s downtown. Ike nodded quietly to himself the whole time, letting out just an occasional “uh-hmmm” now and then. When I was finished, he leaned back against the wall of the grocery, thinking.

  “You know, Moose, ordinarily this might be a challenge. After all, even if I could round up a team, it’s at least two or three hours to get everyone all the way downtown, which doesn’t give us much wiggle room timewise to pull this off.” He stops and hands me one of his trademark smiles. “But tonight you’re in luck! De Fish is already downtown, finishing off a high-dollar catering gig, and he has a team of cats with him who’ll be perfect for what you’ll need.”

  “How can we get word to him in time, though?” I ask, feeling a little more relieved. This might actually work!

  “Not a problem, mon. Not a problem at all. You just leave dis to me. I got it handled.”

  Macy’s Water Tower, 6:45 p.m.

  T

  he original plan was to somehow convince both the Russians and the CCs to meet up here right around seven o’clock, two hours before the store closes, and yet late enough in the day for all the rush hour traffic to die down outside. That would make it easier for the two gangs to find their way to the store undetected, which is key to the whole plan.

  Once again, I got lucky with the trains, and it looks like I’ve made it back just in time for all of the fireworks. I see Fisheye talking to Tommy across the street, probably going over the final details of the caper. Just like old times back at Southside, when we blew a hole in the ceiling of an abandoned sewer tunnel to create an escape route for all the wrongly imprisoned inmates. Now, if we pull this off tonight, maybe we can blow another hole, this time in Vladimir Kitin’s plans to put Boss Dawg at the very head of PETSEC, a development that would almost certainly destroy the organization forever. And leave the world a very dangerous place for any animal not lucky enough to have been born a dog.

  Tommy seems to be wrapping things up with Fisheye, handing him something that the Fish immediately clips to his collar, and then waves me over as Fish heads toward a cluster of cats gathered in the shadows nearby.

  “Moose! Great job getting the decoys lined up on such short notice! I knew you could get it done!”

  My ears are turning red at Tommy’s words, I know, but that doesn’t mean I’m not pleased to hear them. “Aw, I didn’t do all that much. Ike and the Fish were just happy to help. Saving PETSEC—that’s bigger than any of us. That’s bigger than all of us combined.”

  “You’re right about that, Moose. But hey, come on, we’ve got to get the lead out of our paws. My sentries say the Russians are just a few minutes away, and the CCs should arrive right behind them. It’s time we got this show on the road.”

  He steers me in the direction of the department store’s front doors, and using the old trick I’d picked up from Tony for riding the trains, I draft my way inside in between two oblivious groups of humans. Tommy slips in right behind me and points out a spot on the fifth floor near the escalators that will give us a perfect sightline for everything that’s just about to go down. We shoot up the escalator largely unnoticed, then take up our positions under a rack of long women’s dresses, our eyes and noses just barely poking out from underneath.

  While we still have a few minutes left to cool our paws, I decide it would be a great time to catch up on what all had happened while I was gone.

  “It was all pretty straight-forward, Moose,” Tommy explains to me. “Once we had Vladimir Kitin’s contact info, I called him, pretending to be his spy, Tatiana, and told him I—she—had stumbled onto some damning proof that Boss Dawg was planning to double-cross him. Then we sent a similar message to the CCs, passing word to them through the wharf rat me met up with yesterday at the Dead Fish Bar. And then finally we doubled up on all that by slipping a Russian listening device into Boss Dawg’s office back at his headquarters, just in time to trigger it remotely to let out a loud, unmistakable squeal so he’d find it right away. Just a mustard seed of suspicion, really, but to a paranoid criminal like the Dawg, that proved to be more than enough.”

  “And they all bought it?” I ask with no small degree of wonderment. “Just like that? The Russians and the CCs?”

  “No, not at first. But we slipped a similar kind of back-stabbing message to the folks at Q’ute Branch, hoping the Russian mole would jump on the opportunity to relay it right back to Kitin. Which he did, almost immediately, giving Kitin final confirmation that the rumor was in fact true. And in the process letting Q’ute pinpoint the source of t
he leak inside the lab, and arrest the traitor on the spot.”

  “So how does that work to get them all to come rendezvous here?” I ask, already duly impressed by Tony and Tommy’s clever subterfuge.

  “That part was the easiest of all. We simply sent fake messages back and forth between Boss Dawg and Kitin, arranging for them to meet up here at Macy’s in person at seven p.m. sharp to sort through the final details of their sordid plans to throw the election. Just one on one, no henchmen allowed. But of course, each of them promptly ignored that part of the agreement, and as we suspected they’ve both come loaded for bear. So now we have ourselves a classic face-off between the Kremlin and the Criminal, each of them convinced the other is a double-dealing, no-good four-flushing traitor. Which of course they both are, so where’s the surprise in all of that?”

  Tommy can scarcely hide the joy in his voice as he lays everything out neatly. But some questions still keep nagging away at me.

  “So how exactly do the decoys fit into this scheme? And how does that lead to all the dogs getting arrested somehow?” There are still so many pieces to this puzzle I don’t understand, and I can’t help but struggle with the notion that Tommy can manage to pull off organstrating so many moving pieces all at once without something going awry.

  “Just sit back and watch, little Moose. Just sit back and watch.”

  Macy’s, 6:54 p.m.

  T

  he clock is slowly clicking down to seven p.m. Tommy’s sentries out front have reported in that Vladimir Kitin is approaching the front door of Macy’s, followed by a large pack of Wolfhounds, while Boss Dawg and his gang of Dobermans are only about a block away.

  Across the escalator and one floor up from us, a cop with a ginormous gut hanging out over his belt is walking down the aisle near the ladies’ lingerie section, this no doubt being the brightest part of his day. Taking a second look, I see that he’s not wearing a gun. And the logo on his cap isn’t Chicago PD, it’s Macy’s. So it’s not a real cop after all. It’s a mall cop.

  Then I take a third look. Something about this particular cop seems awfully familiar, but I just can’t seem to place it. Then he turns around, facing away from us, and it comes to me right away. Those enormous buns of his, buns I’d sunk all four of my canines into less than twelve months back during the breakout at Southside Prison. It’s Officer McFatty! I’d recognize that fat butt of his anywhere! He must have been busted from the force for letting all of those prisoners escape right under his red bulbous nose! Immediately I remember a phrase I’d once heard from Fat Tony a long, long time ago—“Oh how the mighty have fallen.”

  And just as quickly as that all sinks in, McFatty turns back toward us, and his eyes fall upon me immediately, quickly swelling to the size of saucers as recognition arrives for him as well.

  “You!” he screams at the top of his lungs, pointing a fleshy finger at me as he starts running at full speed in our direction. Well, running as fast as those meaty hamhocks of his can take him.

  I can’t just wait here for him to nab me, and I can’t let McFatty’s unfortunate presence here destroy our whole game plan for the evening, so I know I have to think of something pretty quick. “Tommy! Gotta make like a tree and bug out! Hold down the fort ‘til I get back!”

  I back out from underneath the dress rack just as fast as I possibly can, then take off at top speed toward the rear of the store, hoping to lead him away from the coming attractions. McFatty has hit the down escalator at full tilt himself and is taking the moving steps two at a time, holding onto the side rails to steady himself all the way down. As he turns onto our floor he spots me immediately, racing down the main aisle, heading for what I hope is some kind of safe hideout near the back.

  Luckily, McFatty’s year or so off the Chicago police force fighting the hardened criminal shoplifter crowd at Macy’s hasn’t done a thing for his conditioning, and as near as he’d come to nabbing me the last time, this time it wasn’t even close. Well before he’d finally made his way halfway to the back of the store, I’d already circled around behind him, sprinting just off to his left between the racks, hoping to get close enough to give him a painful reminder of an Aussie Terrier’s very best feature—his teeth! But at the very last moment, just as I’m about to spring into action—literally!—he catches wind of me running along right beside him and spins sharply on his heel.

  That’s when I catch another break. Turns out McFatty is a little out of practice with his ice skating lessons these days, because instead of turning on a dime and bearing down on me at point-blank range, all that blubber he’s carrying around his middle swings out hard to the left while the rest of him is swinging just as hard to the right, and both of his feet fly out from underneath him, sending him sliding across the aisle and crashing into a set of mannequins, which fly up into the air themselves and rain down on top of him like a band of zombies enjoying their last meal.

  I would have liked to stop for just a second to take it all in, and my sides are already starting to heave painfully with my pent-up laughter, seeing him lying there trying desperately to push the pile of mannequins off of him and getting a handful of miniskirts and activewear tank tops filling his face instead as a reward for all his efforts, but I know I have to get back to Tommy in case I’m needed to help direct all the action downstairs. Duty calls, so with a short little “arf” for good measure, I shoot back down the aisle toward the back of the store—I’d been paying close attention to Tommy when he kept talking about the importance of misdirection—then circle the escalators to finally slide back under the dress rack next to Tommy.

  “Good timing, little guy,” he whispers, pointing down below us toward the second floor. “Things are just about to get interesting.”

  Macy’s, 7:00 p.m.

  I

  can just barely make them out, Vladimir Kitin and Boss Dawg standing there a few feet from the top of the escalators next to several displays of women’s shoes, glaring at each other like gunfighters at the Okey-Dokey Corral. I don’t see their goons, but I can assume they’re not too far away, hidden like us behind racks of springtime clothing and endless displays of women’s socks. Kitin has picked up a shoe from a table off to his right and is starting to pound it slowly onto the table, making a steady rap-rap-rap noise. I don’t see any human store attendants at the moment—according to my mistress Helen, you can never find one when you need them—but if Kitin keeps up this loud clatter, I can’t imagine they’ll stay hidden for very long.

  Even with my canine ears I can’t quite make out what they’re saying, but their body language suggests they had started off arguing with each other rather heatedly, but were now beginning to finally put two and two together and figure out that somehow they’d been had. Within just a couple of minutes, Kitin dropped the shoe back on the table, Boss Dawg pocketed a small cudgel that had appeared in his paw from out of nowhere, and then Kitin reached over and enveloped Boss Dawg in a huge bear hug.

  This was all turning out to be a disaster! I glance over at Tommy, who is watching the two men like a hawk, nodding slowly to himself like he had somehow always expected this to happen.

  Without warning, Tommy reaches up and taps the side of his collarphone. “T-Man to Fish Leader. It’s a go. Release the hounds!”

  That’s when all hell broke loose.

  Macy’s, 7:03 p.m.

  T

  hey came out of nowhere, and they kept on coming. Cats! Everywhere you turned, cats! Big cats, short cats, yellow cats, Tuxedo cats, cats with long tails, cats with bobbed tails, giant Maine Coon cats that made Fat Tony look like a midget! Hordes of them! More cats than you ever knew existed!

  And just as soon as they appeared, the bottom four floors of Macy’s turned into a war zone. If there’s one animal Dobermans and Wolfhounds hate more than a stool pigeon, it’s a cat, and now Kitin and Boss Dawg’s backup armies were completely surrounded by them! This must be what Tommy meant when he said he needed several hundred decoys
. He was literally flooding the place with felines, and with fluffy targets surrounding them every which way they turned, the Dobes and Wolfies were completely paralyzed for long a moment, not knowing which cat to chase!

  But that only took a moment. Then, just as quickly as they had appeared, the cats suddenly vanished, as only cats are capable of doing. Kitin and Boss Dawg had dropped the man hug as soon as the cats appeared, and were now jerking their heads in every direction at once, wondering what in the heck had just happened. All around them, their minions have crawled out of their hiding places and are scanning the store themselves, hoping to catch sight of just one of those crazy felines, just one unlucky cat they can sink their teeth into.

  Meanwhile, the missing humans are no longer missing. Earlier on, when the cats first appeared, a large group of them went screaming down the escalator toward the front doors, while one human had enough sense to pull the fire alarm, setting off a painful wailing sound that almost had me howling back in return.

  Kitin and Dawg caught one another’s eye, and shared a single word between them—ESCAPE!

  But it was far too late for that, because apparently Fisheye’s army wasn’t quite done with the two thoroughly confused gangs of criminal canines. One by one a random cat would pop up out of thin air to race right under the noses and legs of the dogs, only to mysteriously disappear once again into a rack of clothing just seconds before a vicious canine maw could chomp down hard on its backside. Again and again they leaped out of hiding to taunt the dogs, leaving the canines—and the few humans who were still standing around, their jaws gaping every bit as open as the dogs, but for a different reason—spinning in place, trying to figure out what in the world was going on in the previously tranquil, orderly aisles of the Water Tower Macy’s, now less than two hours before closing time. An occasional dog would decide to chase after a cat, despite their apparent lack of success with that strategy, only to crash into whatever display case or rack of dresses and blouses the cat faded into. Pretty quickly the bottom four floors of Macy’s looked like a bomb had exploded, the aisles completely blockaded by piles of random clothing and mannequin body parts. On the second floor, a single mannequin head somehow managed to escape its assigned torso only to roll down the main aisle and onto the escalator, where it was carried to the floor below and deposited gently at the bottom, staring sightlessly toward the front door, apparently oblivious to all of the chaos taking place all around it.