From Russia With Fur

by Rene Fomby

  I shake my head no. Reading is something I try to avoid at all costs. Like baths.

  “Well, then, that’s why you’re confused by all this. You see, my friend, when our Founding Canines first drafted the Constitution, they were concerned that some scallywag at some point down the road would figure out a way to get elected to the presidency despite his lack of—the proper character, shall we say—and then misuse the powers of his office in various nefarious and unforeseen ways. To escape prosecution for all his crimes, maybe, or perhaps provide pardons for all of his cronies. Or even sell the spoils of his office to the highest bidder. Which was pretty prescient of them, because that is almost exactly the problem we were facing with this election. Boss Dawg taking over PETSEC and using it as his own private fiefdom, that is truly a scenario from hell. So, to keep this from ever happening, the founders stuck in a few important safeguards.”

  “More than a few, actually,” Tony adds with enthusiasm. “Unlike the human Constitution, which is chock full of vague and contradictory provisions, ours was always intended to serve as an airtight shield for justice and democracy. Or nearly airtight—as we just almost learned to our detriment.”

  Tommy continues his explanation, and I have both ears trained on him like laser beams. “Exactly. As you know, Moose, nothing is perfect, no matter how hard you try to make it so. But the framers of our Constitution put in clauses that, like the humans, allowed presidents to be ousted from power if Congress found them guilty of ‘high crimes and misdemeanors.’ But unlike the humans, we also added in a clause that prevents any animal currently serving time for ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ from ever getting elected in the first place. And, if the crimes happen to involve some kind of plot to steal the election, or any other unlawful electoral scheme, that ban is perpetual.”

  A light is starting to go off inside my head. “So when Boss Dawg got arrested last night and thrown into Southside Prison—”

  Tommy’s tail is swishing nonstop now. “He was automatically rendered ineligible to participate in the election for PETSEC president.”

  “And that means I was the only candidate still left on the ballot, so I was the only one who could get elected,” Tony cuts in with a wicked grin. “Boss Dawg’s votes get thrown out as a matter of law, and I win the election by default. Regardless of how the Russian hackers managed to rig the voting machines.”

  Now it all suddenly makes sense. “And the whole chaotic mess at Macy’s—”

  Tommy spreads his paws out wide in front of him. “That was all a carefully executed plot to get Boss Dawg arrested just in time to erase his name from the official ballot.”

  “And we’ll be bringing our own criminal cases against him very soon in PETSEC federal court, charging him with conspiring with the Russians to steal the election,” Tony explains. “So, according to our Constitution, he will forever be banned from holding any office of any kind within PETSEC. He can’t even be elected human catcher by the time we’re finished with him. That is, assuming he ever gets released from Southside, which I sincerely doubt will ever happen. I can’t see any human ever thinking he might make a nice lap dog for some kid.”

  “So what happens to the Crimson Canines, now?” I ask.

  Tommy shrugs his shoulders. “My best guess is they’ll just melt away, whatever’s left of the organization. Without Boss Dawg keeping everyone in line, it’s not exactly a group of well-behaved model citizens we’re talking about. None of them have ever developed much beyond the puppy stage, emotionally or intellectually. And you know how well-organized puppies can be.”

  As a former puppy myself, I guess I should have been offended by that remark, but Tommy has a good point. And I can only hope he winds up being right about all that. Boss Dawg or not, the Crimson Canines have caused a world of sorrow and anguish to humans and animals alike over the years, and I for one won’t be sorry to see that group of rabid canines disappear from our city’s streets for good. Or should I say, for bad?

  Home, 6:30 p.m.

  N

  ow that I know the election’s in the bag, there’s no real reason to hang around Tony’s office any longer for the celebration, and I desperately need to get back to Bella. She’s probably worried sick right about now, thinking she might be trafficked to the slavers as early as tomorrow morning. And I’m not all that sure she’s gonna feel any better after what I have to tell her.

  Bella’s waiting for me by the fence the moment I arrive home, her eyes filled with that combination of sad puppydog, loyal companion look only a Corgi could really pull off. Sammy Squirrel has moved down from the tree and is sitting on top of the fence as I crawl through my hole under the mulberry bush. Which, by the way, is getting a lot harder than it used to be—is it possible my little escape hole is starting to shrink up on me?

  Sammy starts chittering away almost as soon as I squeeze through. “I must say, Moose, I’m impressed by what you managed to pull off over the last two days. Didn’t really think you had it in you!”

  I’m not sure whether I should take that as a compliment or a back-handed insult, but since Sammy’s got no hands, I decide to go with the former. Anyway, the Squirrel’s the least of my problems at the moment. I gotta face Bella with the bad news.

  She hits me with it right off the bat. “So, what did you find out, Moose? Does the Relo Bureau have something lined up for us yet?”

  Slowly, and very delicately, I walk her through my day and my fruitless meetings with the good kind folks from the Relocation Bureau. There’s just no way to sugarcoat the news—unless some miracle pops up literally overnight, Bella and I are completely out of options. By this time tomorrow we’ll probably both be homeless and starving, living each day paw-to-mouth. In other words, strays. I’m just not going with “fenceless.”

  Bella looks completely devastated. “I—I don’t know what to do, Moose! I overheard my humans talking just this afternoon, and Susan was really adamant about sending me off to some prison farm, or maybe some place even worse, and I think my master is starting to cave under all the pressure. What’s worse, I think they’re coming over to your house tonight for dinner. So if something’s afoot between Susan and your master Howard, my guess is they’ll spring it on Phil and Helen tonight, probably after they’ve gotten them loosened up with that silly juice they always drink. We need to be there when it happens, find a way to listen in on what they’re planning without any of them knowing we’re there!”

  Bella and I are on the same page on all this right now. I think back to earlier today, on the boat. If what we’re facing is in fact a life-altering collision in our lives, then we need to see that crash coming soon enough to jump free in time, stray or no stray

  “Okay, Bella, here’s the plan. I’ll sneak you inside through the doggie door as soon as Helen’s served up what she calls her appeteasers. Everyone will be in the living room at that point, so we can set up a steak out under the dining room table. That’s where I always like to hang out when there’s steak out—close to the action where I can grab a mouthful or three when nobody’s looking.”

  “I don’t think that’s what they mean by the phrase ‘stake out’,” Bella murmurs. “But go on. What happens when they move into the dining room? They’ll expect you to be there, to be sure, but if anyone ever thinks to check under the table they’ll spot me in a heartbeat.”

  “Right. So that’s when we’ll swing back through the kitchen and wait near the butler’s pantry for Helen to drop off the first set of plates and then grab the dinner plates and start shuffling them toward the dining room. I’ll distract her by doing my little dancing, begging routine—she falls for it every time—while you scoot over beneath the breakfast table. The lights will be off over there in the corner, so you’ll be completely in the dark, unseen. When all the humans are finally in the dining room, I’ll signal for you to slink across the living room to take up a scouting position under the couch while I keep them distracted by trying to jump in everybody
’s laps. When you’re safe and sound and I’ve gotten more than my fair share of ‘bad dogs’, I’ll pull the old misdirection switcheroo back through the kitchen and then join you under the couch. How does that sound?”

  “Wow. You really have picked up some skills as a Double-O agent over the past few days,” Bella gushes. And I’m not going to lie, my chest has swollen right now to about double its normal size. No way I’d make it through that hole near the mulberry bush now.

  Okay, back to the steak out. With the plan now in place, all we have left is to execute. My supersensitive ears pick up Bella’s humans walking out their front door, heading toward my house, so we don’t have a second to waste. It’s launch time.

  Home, 9:30 p.m.

  M

  y plan worked out to perfection, I’m happy to say. That whole organstraw thing I wasn’t sure Tommy could pull off? Well, I had the fat lady singing all night long. No one had the slightest idea Bella was even there. Or that the two of us were steaked out spying intently on their conversation the whole time.

  Not that it really mattered. As usual, the humans spent the night mangling their words like they all had a fistful of marbles in their mouths, and Bella and I barely understood a word they said. The silly juice didn’t help.

  Finally, Bella’s humans said their goodbyes and stumbled home. And by stumbled, I mean that quite literally. Phil was totally wasted, and he was getting an unwelcome earful from Susan. And, hey, I hate to pull the old superiority thing on humans, but you know, it is totally irresponsible of them to behave like that when they know they have their real responsibilities back home making sure we’re completely protected and well served. Just saying.

  Anyway, Phil and Susan have just left, and Howard and Helen are back in the living room, while Bella and I have shifted steak out positions and are trying to stay invisible under the dining room table. Which took no small amount of planning on my part to organstrate, I might add.

  For the second night in a row, my humans seem to be really upset at each other, this time apparently about something that was said over dinner. Something neither Bella nor I managed to catch, despite our best efforts. We both have our ears up and fully locked in, trying to figure out what the argument is about. And to make things worse, I have a second, equally pressing concern—I need to get Bella back home safely and completely undetected, and soon. We don’t need to hand Susan any more ammunition to fire Phil’s way. Not now, not when everything’s on the line.

  Howard is talking, his face beet red, his right fist pounding the space above his head like he’s playing some kind of Air Whack-A-Mole. Helen does not look happy at all.

  “What the hell, Helen. First Moose, and now this? You have got to be kidding me!”

  “I think it’s a perfectly good solution, Howard. Everyone benefits. It’s a win-win proposition all the way around.”

  Howard turns on her, now pulling his fists down to his side. “And just how is this a win-win, Helen? I relented and gave in to you on the Moose situation, okay? Thinking that might make you happy, just trying to be understanding, right? But now you just seem to be doubling down on me all of a sudden. Two dogs? Not going to happen. Not in my lifetime.”

  “First of all, mister, if you relented on the whole Moose thing, this is the first I’ve heard of it. The last word I heard out of your mouth on the subject is that you were dead set on taking him to the pound. Which is never going to happen, by the way. Never—going—to—happen.”

  “Don’t try and change the subject, Helen. Moose or not, no way we’re hauling a second dog across the pond. A dog, by the way, that her own owners don’t even want. Want to dump her the first chance they get. Well, this ain’t the city dump, Helen. We got our own load of trash to deal with, is all I’m saying.”

  “Trash? Trash? You’re saying Moose is nothing more than trash?” I seldom see Helen out of sorts, acting anything other than completely poised and in control, but now she seems like she’s ready to explode any minute now. Maybe even commit murder. Her hands grab the sides of her thighs, squeezing hard, in a way that has got to be painful. Finally, staring off in our direction but not seeing Bella and I watching her from under the dining room table, she responds in a strangely quiet and tightly controlled voice. “Actually, I don’t recall my ever giving you a vote in the matter, Howard. But you want me to be a housewife? Fine. Then it’s my decision to make. Housewife, that’s two simple words. House, wife. So if that’s what you want me to be, if that’s the role I’m supposed to play, then fine. I will. But that means it’s my house, my household, so it’s my rules. I’ll run it however I please. Case closed.”

  “No, Helen, decisions like these are not unilateral. We have to agree—”

  “Like I agreed for you to take the new job? Like I agreed to move off to some foreign country and live on a damned boat? I’m sorry, refresh my memory. When exactly did those votes occur?”

  “The new job in England is the very best thing that could happen for the both of us, and you know it, Helen. The money—”

  “When was the last time you heard me complain about being poor? When was the last time you heard me complain about needing more money? This isn’t about the money, and it never has been. It’s about you, and you alone. I’ve never even been consulted. You’ll recall that the first time I even heard about the new job was after you’d accepted it.”

  “They needed an answer right away—”

  “And you couldn’t even put them on hold and give me a call first? Did you even think about me once before you said yes?”

  “I thought you’d be thrilled about the whole thing, a chance for an adventure—”

  “No, don’t even try to go there, mister. Look, I’ve told you what I think about all this. I’m not yet ready to break up our marriage, not at this point. But you need to make some big changes in your behavior toward me, Howard. You need to make some serious changes in your whole attitude toward me. And it all starts here. I’ve made up my mind, and I’m not going to discuss it any more. Period.”

  “But, be reasonable, Helen. The noise—how can anyone possibly deal with that kind of cacophony in such a tiny, confined space?”

  But Helen has the same look on her face she was showing the day she beat the Doberman out of our back yard with a broomstick. Her arms are crossed, tightly, and she’s refusing to even glance in his direction. My master Howard makes his way slowly over to the front of the fireplace, leaning forward with his hands on the mantle, staring smolderingly into the smoldering fire. Finally he stiffens, standing up straight and throwing both hands into the air.

  “Okay, okay! I give up, Helen! You win! We’ll take the damned Corgi with us to London. The Corgi and that damned Yorkie of yours. And it’s on you, Helen, it’s all on you. I’ll have nothing to do with either one of them!”

  I only caught a few words of what had been going back and forth between them, mainly focusing in on the body language, but I clearly understand those last few words, and the sudden change in Helen’s body language. I look over at Bella, muzzle-to-muzzle, and see that she caught it, too. And is starting to get all watery-eyed on me again. But this time the corners of her mouth are curling up instead of down.

  So, I guess I’m gonna lose my very best girlfriend, after all. But I’ll gain a sister in the process. A very precious sister. And that’s a bargain I will gladly take any day. Every day for the rest of my life.

  Acknowledgments

  T

  his book was not so much written as simply transcribed. If portions of this story seem a bit chaotic, the reality of my household is on a whole other level. It is nothing to have ten or eleven dogs and two or three cats racing pell-mell through my house every Christmas. And you’d think there would be some disagreements—God knows we humans struggle to stay perfectly civil with each other for just a few days every year. But most of the time the pets don’t seem to ever notice. As long as breakfast is served in a timely manner and the doggie door to t
he backyard is left unlocked, they are perfectly happy and carefree little critters.

  But the two years or so since I first published Private Eyes has been hard on our family, pet-wise. First Moose left us, then Fat Tony, and then in a very short period Dirk and Spot, two cats you would swear were identical twins. Still left to love are Minnie the Great Pyrenees mutt (who famously survived distemper as a puppy), Ellie the Pembroke Corgi, and dear little Patton, a rescue Australian Terrier who lost one eye when he was abandoned to fend for himself in a backyard for over a month. Actually, all three are rescues of a sort, even Ellie, who was so sick as a puppy they never bothered to dock her tail. And I will never again face life without a Corgi in it, stirring up as much trouble as those tiny little legs can manage. God sure packed a lot of dog into a tiny little package.

  Once again, this book would be unfit for human, canine or even feline consumption but for the love and attention it received from my amazing editor, Kara Vaught. Her mastery of the English language is second to none, and this book is an excellent testament to that, Moose’s creative mangling of that language notwithstanding.

  The cover design comes from Cathy Helms at Avalon Graphics, whom I would highly recommend. Not only does she create what I think are fantastic covers with great eyeball appeal, she is also amazingly easy to work with. I gave her some general ideas, expecting to have to go through many, many iterations before she finally got it right, but to my surprise she hit it out of the ball park right off the bat. If you ever want your book judged in a positive way by its cover, call Ms. Helms.

  As always, my everlasting thanks to Elizabeth, my greatest cheerleader, my inspiration, my best friend forever, and the keeper of my heart.