by Martha Carr
“That’s what I’m sayin’.”
The dwarf felt like he could breathe a little easier when they left Times Square and crossed the last few blocks before they finally entered Central Park. At least I can pretend there’s fresh air here.
“Now this is what I’m talkin’ about,” Rex said. “Look at all those trees.”
“Trees. Let’s go mark some trees. Come on, Johnny. Let us off.”
“Sorry, boys.” He gazed at the tall trees and down again when two kids ran screaming from one of their parents chasing after them with giant, exaggerated steps. “Rules are rules. Hounds gotta be leashed.”
“And not kids? What gives?”
“Yeah, they’re ten times messier.”
Lisa smiled as they strolled down the walkway. The city sounds had faded into a distant background roar and they could hear the birds and the laughter of people enjoying themselves. Cyclists passed on the bike paths, and two elderly men sat side by side on a park bench, reading their newspapers without looking at each other.
“Johnny.” She caught his upper arm in excitement and pulled away again quickly when he looked at her hand. “Sorry. I only… You can hear that, right? The music?”
“Yeah. So?”
“So that’s the carousel.”
He exhaled a long sigh and stared directly ahead.
“It’s right on the other side of that dog statue. Look.” She pointed beyond the statue at the carousel already packed with kids and adults. “Come on, Johnny. Ride on the carousel with me.”
“No.”
“It’s beautiful out here. Come on. It’s spring in Central Park! How can you say no to that?”
“Damn easily, actually.”
“You’re not even trying.”
“You said ‘try to loosen up’ not ‘try to ride a carousel in Central Park.’”
She pursed her lips. “Maybe you’ll change your mind when we get there.”
They approached the huge statue of the dog that looked more like a wolf than anything else. Rex thrust his head skyward and howled. “Balto!”
“Come on, Johnny.” Luther panted and glanced from the dwarf to the statue. “We gotta pay our respects.”
He snorted. “Statue first. It’s on the way.”
The bronze statue erected on a mound of rock glinted in the sunlight that spilled through the trees.
“Yes. Johnny, we gotta get closer.”
“To pay our respects.”
Johnny took his hounds to the edge of the rock and stared at the statue. “Sled dog, huh?”
“He’s a hero, Johnny.” Luther sniffed at the base of the rock.
“Saved a lotta human pups, too. And grown ones. You remember the stories better than we do.” Rex knocked against his brother’s shoulder as they passed each other, their noses to the grass.
“I read something about Balto once,” Lisa said. “He helped to save an entire town in Nome, Alaska in the early nineteen-hundreds. Maybe 1920.”
“1925,” Rex corrected. “A damn hero. Johnny told us all about him.”
“I think that was when antibiotics were first—what?” Lisa glanced at the sound of water hitting rock and found both hounds with their legs lifted over the bottom of the statue’s rocky base. She wrinkled her nose. “Oh…”
“All right.” Trying not to laugh, Johnny whistled and tugged lightly on the leashes. “You’ve paid your respects. Let’s go.”
“Yeah. Thanks, Johnny.”
Rex howled again. “That was epic.”
The music from the carousel grew louder as they approached, along with the shrieking laughter of the kids riding the damn thing incessantly.
“Okay, let’s try this again.” Lisa’s wide eyes glistened eagerly as she grinned at the carousel and the trees in full spring bloom all around them. “Only one ride.”
Johnny shook his head. “No.”
“Please. This has been on my list for—” She froze and swallowed awkwardly.
He paused with a slow smirk and turned to look at her. “You have a list?”
A light blush rose on her cheeks. “Only a small one. Things I wanna do in New York. That kinda thing.”
“Uh-huh.” His smile widened as he nodded at her. “Let’s see it.”
“What? No. You don’t wanna see this.”
“Are you embarrassed by your wish list, Agent Breyer?”
She flashed him a scathing glance. “No. It’s only…personal.”
“All right, I don’t have to see it. List ʼem for me.”
“Johnny…”
“Maybe there’s something on there we can go do that won’t make me miss the swamp more than I already do.”
She glared at him, glanced at the trees, and sighed. “Fine.”
“Let’s hear it.”
Lisa pulled her phone out of her pocket and scrolled through her notes until she found her list. “Okay. Carousel at Central Park.”
“We covered that one. Next.”
“Go to the Plaza Hotel for tea.”
He snorted. “Tea. Nope.”
“Ride a gondola in Central Park.”
“The only boat I step into is my flat-bottom airboat. Next.”
She avoided his gaze as the blush deepened in her cheeks. “Go to the top of 30 Rock.”
“Good grief.”
“Are you gonna say no to everything?”
Johnny glanced at her phone. “Is there anything else on the list?”
“No.” She glared at him.
“Then yes.” He stepped away from a four-year-old girl who babbled excitedly to her mom about riding the carousel and hauled the woman toward it. “Moving on. Are you hungry?”
“Well…not now.”
“Come on.” He nodded down the path and kept moving to put more distance between him and the carousel. “This will make you forget all about that list.”
Lisa shoved her phone into her pocket and walked slowly after him with a final longing look at the carousel. “I seriously doubt it.”
Chapter Eleven
“Okay, wait.” Lisa pulled her hair away from her face that glistened with sweat and tied it in a loose ponytail. “Where are we now?”
“West Village.” Johnny sniffed and turned the corner onto Bleeker Street.
“We’re almost there, right?”
“Yeah. It’s right here.” He studied her quickly and gave her a brief smile. “Are you feeling winded, Agent Breyer?”
“If I’d known you wanted to take us all the way here from Central Park, I’d have gotten us a taxi.”
He chuckled. “I like walking. Plus, there’s nothing like a good long walk through Manhattan to work up an appetite.”
“Yes. Food!” Rex panted heavily and licked his muzzle. “That’s what we’re doin’, right, Johnny?”
“Thank the canine gods.” Luther sniffed the sidewalk and left a string of drool puddles in his wake. “I thought I’d have to start eating shoes if we waited any longer.”
“Everyone’s gonna love this,” the dwarf said. “There’s only one thing I gotta do every time I make it out here, no exceptions.”
“Walk for an hour and a half without giving your partner a little heads’ up?”
Again with the partner business? Let it go, Johnny. “I gotta get a slice of New York pizza. And John’s is the real deal.”
“It doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that you guys have the same name, does it?” Lisa shrugged out of her jacket and tossed it over her arm.
“John and Johnny are not the same name.” The dwarf nodded at the long string of people standing on the sidewalk in front of them. “And no. He could’ve named the place Tim’s Pizza and that line would still stretch this far out the door every day.”
“Wow. That’s…some line.” She grimaced and adjusted her aviator sunglasses.
“It moves quickly. And we still have time to kill, right?” They reached the end of the line and stopped. Johnny looked at his federal tagalong and raised his eyebrows. “Try to loosen u
p, huh?”
She gaped at him, her mouth open in exasperation. Then, she laughed. “Yeah, Johnny. I can loosen up.”
“Perfect.”
Over half an hour later, they finally stepped up to the window to order their pizza.
“Yeah, give me a Hawaiian with extra pineapple,” Johnny said, “and three waters. Are you good with Hawaiian?”
Lisa shrugged. “Sure.”
“You got it.” The man shouted their order to the kitchen behind him, the dwarf paid the man in cash, and they stepped aside to wait for their food.
“John makes every single one of them back there by hand,” he said. “It’s the best damn pizza you can get in this city.”
“It had better be with this kinda line.”
“If it wasn’t, it wouldn’t have the line.”
“Chris?” the guy behind the food counter shouted.
A man in skinny jeans and a baseball cap stepped forward to take his pizza box and a handful of napkins before he turned to head to a seat outside. He stopped when he saw Johnny and gave the dwarf a hasty study before he shook a finger at him. “Hey. I know you.”
“Probably not.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I do. Aren’t you that guy from that show?”
“Yep.” He nodded toward the tables and turned away from the man. “Go eat your pizza.”
“I knew it.” The stranger walked away, maneuvered around the other patrons with his giant pizza box, and darted Johnny another look over his shoulder.
“What show?” Lisa asked.
He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. It was a long time ago.”
“Oh, come on. Tell me.”
“No.”
She folded her arms. “I showed you my list.”
“You read me your list. Look it up if you’re so interested.”
“Maybe I will.”
The guy at the window called Johnny’s name shortly after that, and they took their food and moved away to find a place to sit and eat outside.
When they settled and Johnny opened the box, Lisa stared at the slices inside. “This is huge.”
Rex snorted. “That’s what she said. Right, Johnny?”
Luther responded with a high-energy laugh. “Literally. Come on, Johnny. Show your hounds some love.”
He cracked a bottle of water and leaned over to pour some into his cupped hand for Rex first, then Luther. “That’s New York pizza for you. It’s still hard to not eat all of it.”
“And you’re gonna eat the rest? I can’t have more than one slice?”
The hounds lapped the last of the water and he shook his hand and took two pepperoni and extra-pineapple slices. “No. Dogs who want pineapple on their pizza get extra.”
“Johnny, you’re the best.”
“Seriously, I could kiss you.”
“He could kiss you for me.”
As soon as the slices touched the ground, Rex and Luther were all over them. They licked the pools of grease and loose pineapple piled on too high to stick to the melted cheese.
“Of course they do.” Lisa shook her head and stared at the massive slices inside the box. “There’s no way this isn’t gonna fall apart when I pick it up.”
The dwarf leaned forward and rested his forearms on his thighs. He smirked as he watched her try to lift the crust with one hand and support the greasy, floppy end of her pizza with the other. She managed a small bite but couldn’t get the rest of the slice to do what she wanted.
“Yeah. Maybe I need a fork.”
He chuckled. “And you’ve never eaten New York pizza.”
“It would seem not.”
Folding his slice in half, Johnny held the fold with both hands and took a massive bite. “It keeps all the good stuff right where you want it.”
“Fold the pizza.” Lisa laughed with embarrassment. “So simple.”
“See? Now you’re gettin’ it. Keep it simple.” He took another massive bite and wiped the grease from his beard and mustache with an already crumpled napkin. “If I missed anything about New York, it’s this.”
“Johnny, if I’d ever been to New York,” Luther muttered through the snuffling of his perfectly content pizza-eating, “I’d miss this too.”
“I already miss it,” Rex added.
Lisa took his advice and folded her slice in half for another bite. “Yeah, it’s good. I’m still not sure if it’s worth waiting in line that long, though.”
He lowered his pizza and scowled at her. “That’s crossing a line.”
She laughed. “Sore point. I get it. My bad.”
“Uh-huh.”
They ate their pizza and watched the other New Yorkers eating their slices from John’s Pizzeria on Bleeker. It seemed most of the pedestrians had boxes in their hands or at least a slice taken from their friends’ boxes. A construction crew at the end of the street had stopped to take their lunch too, and Lisa thought she even saw a John’s Pizzeria box on the open tailgate of a truck.
“Oh, no.” She wiped the grease that dribbled down her chin and nodded at a woman who walked toward them down the sidewalk. “Is that woman walking her cat?”
“It’s not the weirdest thing.” Johnny opened a bottle of water for himself and handed her the third.
“Thanks. What’s the weirdest thing?”
“On a leash? I’ve seen ferrets. An iguana. Hell, people sometimes.”
Her eyes widened and she guzzled the water. “Only in New York, right?”
“Probably not. You merely see everything in one place here.”
“It almost sounds like you know New York as much as a New Yorker does.”
“Something like that.” He shoveled another huge bite of pizza into his mouth and flicked a stray piece of pineapple onto the ground for the dogs. Something we’re not gettin’ into right now. Or ever.
Lisa studied him as she twisted the lid onto her bottled water. “Where did you live before Florida?”
Johnny grunted. “Too many places to count.”
“Okay, well give me one.”
“That cabin in the Everglades is the only place I’m interested in calling home. We’ll leave it at that.”
“Okay.” She tilted her head and took another bite. “What if you could live in any place in the world? Where would you go?”
“That cabin in the Everglades.”
She laughed and fought to keep the pizza from spraying out of her mouth. “I mean if money weren’t an option.”
“It’s not. I was right where I wanted to be before you and Nelson arrived and turned the whole thing upside down.”
Swallowing quickly, she snatched another napkin and wiped the grease trailing down the side of her wrist. “Well, when we get that Lemonhead asshole tonight and bring Amanda back with us, you can return to the swamp and…whatever you do down there.”
Luther licked his chops and raised his head to sniff the box between the dwarf and the federal agent. “We won’t be eatin’ a feast like this, that’s for sure. Got any extras, Johnny?”
“Yeah, me too.” Rex licked up the last few pieces of pineapple from the ground. “I could keep goin’ forever.”
Johnny grabbed two more slices from the box and dropped them in front of the dogs. Neither hound said another word as they attacked the food in the way only good hounds who knew the value of Hawaiian pizza could.
He dusted his hands off and sniffed. “Damn straight.”
Chapter Twelve
On their way to the hotel, Johnny was quieter than usual. To anyone who knew it, this was significant.
“Is there anything else I have to see before we get our heads in the game for tonight?” Lisa asked and gulped the last of her bottled water.
“Nope.” He belched loudly and thumped his fist against his chest. “I could go for a nap, though.”
“You can sleep before going after a target?” She tossed her water bottle into the trash and shook her head. “In the middle of the day?”
“Technically, it’s late afternoon. Lac
k of sleep is the number-one…” He slowed six feet in front of the open doorway to a smoke shop and clenched his teeth.
The memory he’d spent the last fifteen years trying to remove from the forefront of his mind flared again in vivid detail—as vivid as the first time the pictures had been laid out in front of him. Dawn’s small, helpless body sprawled across the doorway. She had blood in her hair exactly like the picture of Amanda Coulier’s twin sister. And that fucking giraffe in the corner of the frame appeared in at least two photos with the same dent in the metal side of the doorway.
No.
“Number-one what?” Lisa twisted to look over her shoulder, found that he’d fallen behind, and spun with a frustrated gesture. “Johnny? You can’t start with something like that and simply drop it halfway through.” The dwarf’s fists clenched so tightly around the ends of the hounds’ leashes, all his knuckles popped at the same time.
“What’s wrong?”
“That fucking giraffe.”
She laughed uncertainly. “The what?”
“I’ve seen that before.” Johnny glanced at the marquee over the shop. They didn’t bother to catch the fucking storefront in the crime scene photos.
“This giraffe?” Rex poked his head through the doorway to sniff the three-foot-tall bronze statue of a giraffe bending its neck toward the ground. “Want me to shake it, Johnny?”
“Yeah, we’ll play fetch,” Luther added.
He snapped his fingers and both dogs sat. With a low growl, the dwarf reached for each of their collars and unhooked the leashes, which he let fall onto the sidewalk without a second thought. “Stay close, boys.”
“Johnny?”
“You can stay out here or you can follow me, but if you do come with me, you do everything I say and save the questions for later.” He didn’t wait for her to reply before he strode into the establishment and headed directly to the counter.
“Welcome to Vape Your Day.” The clerk was a man in his mid-twenties with giant rings in his ears and piercings all over his sharp-featured face. “Woah, man. Sorry. No dogs allowed—”
Johnny thumped a hand on the glass top of the display case. “Who’s the owner of this place?”
“Hey, man.” The clerk raised his hands. “I only work here—”