Dog in the Manger: An Eli Paxton Mystery

by Mike Resnick

  I filled the Chevy again, got onto Interstate 10, and started driving west across New Mexico. I crossed the Arizona border in late afternoon, and a few minutes later came to a police roadblock. They were still inspecting cars for flea-carrying animals. It seemed like they would never get to me, but after about twenty minutes a cop stuck his head into my open window, took a quick look, and told me I could move on.

  I stopped south of Tucson for the night, registered as P. Rose at a run-down little motel, and put in a wake-up call for 4:00 a.m.

  I got up at three-thirty, considered taking a shower, decided that I really didn’t want to rub a towel over my stitches, and settled for a quick shave.

  I got to Phoenix before morning rush hour started, and pulled into a twenty-four-hour pancake house. Even if I knew how to find Joan’s place—which I didn’t—I had no intention of parking a car with a Mexican license plate anywhere near it. I walked to a phone booth, hunted up her number in the directory, deposited my quarter, and waited until she picked up the receiver on the fifth ring.

  “Hello?” she said, and I could tell I had awakened her.

  “Hello, Joan. This is Eli Paxton.”

  “Eli, what’s the matter with you? You sound like your mouth is full of potatoes.”

  “It’s a long story. Listen, I hate to put you on the spot like this, but I need a place to stay for a day or two, and they’re probably watching everyone else I know out here. Can you put me up?”

  “Of course I can. I already told your doctor I would.”

  “Thanks. I feel really bad about this, but—”

  “Shut up, Eli,” she interrupted, “and tell me where you are and when you’ll be arriving.”

  “I’m already here in Phoenix,” I replied. “Can you pick me up?”

  I gave her the address of the pancake house, and she told me she’d be there within twenty minutes. It took her closer to thirty, but I was so glad to see a friendly face that I didn’t utter a word of complaint.

  “My God, Eli!” she gasped, taking a good look at me as I climbed into her sporty little Mazda. “What happened to you?”

  “Mexico didn’t agree with me,” I said wryly. I tried to smile at her, but it pulled the stitches in my lip and I winced instead.

  “Don’t joke about it,” she said. “You look terrible. Are you taking any medication?”

  “Relax, Joan,” I said. “I’m fine, except for the fact that these stitches are starting to itch like crazy—especially the ones on my ribcage.”

  “Your ribcage?” she repeated. “You mean there’s more than what I see?”

  “A little.”

  “When’s the last time you changed your clothes or washed?”

  “It’s been a while,” I admitted. “Do I smell that bad?”

  She uttered a most unladylike curse. “I suppose the notion of infection is a totally new concept to you,” she said sarcastically. “As soon as we get home I’m going to put you in the tub and clean your cuts.”

  I started to protest, but she cut me short.

  “You listen to me, Eli Paxton,” she said. “If I can whelp puppies and medicate geriatric animals and remove stitches from bitches after they’ve had Caesarian sections, I think I can tend to a middle-aged man who thinks he’s James Bond without going all to pieces.”

  “All right,” I said. “But first I want you to stop at a local drugstore.”

  “You need a prescription filled?” she said. “I’ll take you home first and then go out for it.”

  I shook my head. “No. I’ve got to make a phone call. It’s almost eight o’clock; the man I need should be in his office by now.”

  “Call him from my house.”

  “I don’t want it traced,” I said.

  “You think someone’s tapping my phone?”

  “No, but there may be a problem at the other end. Besides, he’s in Mexico, and I think the call would show up on your bill.”

  She pressed her foot down harder on the accelerator. “Your phone call can wait. The first thing we’re going to do is take care of those wounds.”

  “But—”

  “Do be quiet, Eli. I have a personal interest in restoring some semblance of health to your body, or have you forgotten?” She paused. “You look exhausted. Why don’t you just lean back and relax while I drive? We’ll talk later.”

  She must have been right, because I thought I was just closing my eyes to mollify her, and when I opened them we were pulling into her driveway. I followed her into the townhouse, tossed my cowboy hat and sunglasses on the coffee table, allowed Bingo to examine me for hidden munchies, walked over to her liquor cabinet, and poured myself a drink.

  “I take it you’re not out of danger yet,” said Joan, returning from doing some minor puttering in the kitchen.

  “Soon,” I said. “This thing is about to blow sky high, and as soon as it does they’re going to have more to worry about than a beat-up private eye from the Midwest.”

  “What’s it all about, Eli?”

  “Drugs,” I said. “I don’t know what kind, or who’s buying and who’s selling, but there’s a cop in Monterrey who ought to have the answers by now.”

  “And Baroness—where does she fit in?”

  “I wish I knew,” I admitted. I had put Baroness out of my mind for the past couple of days, but the fact remained that I was still being paid to find out what had happened to her, and on that score I was still batting a great big fat zero.

  She waited until I had finished my drink. Then she stood up and walked over to me, hands on hips.

  “All right, Eli—into the bedroom.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding!”

  “The bathroom is right off the bedroom, you dirty old man,” she said. “I want you out of those clothes and into a hot tub. It will help your stitches to stop itching.”

  She turned on her heel and walked off to the bedroom, and I fell into step behind her.

  She helped me off with my shirt and did her best to hide her reaction to all the stitches and the huge blue bruises on my torso. She started the water running while I got out of the rest of my clothes, then helped me to ease down into the warm tub.

  I had to admit that it felt good, and she very carefully sponged me off around my various cuts and wounds. When I got out of the tub she disappeared for a moment, then returned with a small green tube.

  “Panalog,” she said, rubbing the stuff on my lip and forearms. “It’s half-antibiotic and half-steroid.”

  “But it’s for dogs!” I protested.

  “They call it Panalog for dogs and charge five dollars a tube. They call it something else for people and charge forty dollars for the same thing. Now stop squirming and let me get some of this into your eye.”

  I was all set for a burning sensation, but instead it felt cool and soothing, and I made a mental note to pick up a couple of dozen tubes as soon as I got back to Cincinnati.

  She toweled me off very gently, then handed me one of her husband’s old bathrobes. He must have been one hell of a big bruiser, because it fit like a tent. I felt like a kid swimming around in his father’s clothes, and I hoped that her ex wasn’t inclined to pay surprise visits early in the day.

  She got my clothes sizes from me and went out to buy me a couple of shirts, some shorts, and a pair of slacks while I was making myself some coffee. When she got back she remembered that she hadn’t bought any socks, but I told her I would just wear the ones I had come with.

  “They can practically walk around by themselves,” she snapped, tossing them into a washing machine that was hidden behind a sliding panel in her hallway.

  For the next half hour we kept starting conversations and the phone kept ringing. Someone in Los Angeles called to see if Bingo was still at stud or had been retired. Someone from Connecticut called to ask her to judge a show fourteen months up the road. (She turned it down, as she already had a judging assignment in California that day. I was amazed to find out that dog show judges were booked u
p that far ahead.) Someone from Tucson called to see if she wanted to drive over and check out some new puppies. It began to occur to me that dog breeders, rather than stockbrokers, were AT&T’s favorite people.

  In fact, my socks were washed and dried before the phone finally stopped, and I told her that I was going to have to go to a not too local drugstore or hotel lobby to make my long distance call.

  “Can’t I make it for you?”

  “The guy I have to speak with would never give you the information I need.”

  “Are you sure this is really necessary?” she asked dubiously. “After all, who’s going to go to Arizona Bell and rifle through their records? In fact, who could?”

  “The same people who could bomb hotel rooms and fix cargo manifests,” I replied.

  I thought for a minute that she was going to make an issue of it, but then she shrugged and led me out to the car. We drove about ten miles and pulled into a gas station that had a pair of enclosed pay phones. I laid a ten dollar bill on the counter, got forty quarters in exchange for it, and entered a booth.

  It took about five minutes to get connected to Vallero’s office, and another couple of minutes for them to hunt him down, during which time I signaled Joan that I might need some more change and she broke another bill for me. Finally Vallero got to his desk and picked up his extension, and I asked him if he had received the two vials.

  “They were waiting for me yesterday morning,” he replied. “I might also add that there is a warrant out for your arrest on three charges of auto theft. It’s nothing we can’t straighten out, but you may have to come down here and let us take your deposition before we can drop the charges.”

  “Never mind that,” I said. “What was in the vials?”

  “Measles and diphtheria vaccine.”

  “You’re crazy!” I snapped.

  “I have the report right in front of me,” he replied calmly. “The contents of the vials were exactly as labeled.”

  “Someone on your staff is working for them!”

  “Mr. Paxton,” he said slowly, “you have caused me a great deal of difficulty. Thanks to you I have a dead man on my hands, plus a number of missing cars. Now you are accusing the Monterrey Police Department of collusion with an enemy that has made itself manifest only to you, and of falsifying information. Do you understand that I am somewhat reluctant to put much credence in your charges?”

  “But damn it, why else were they trying so goddamned hard to kill me once they found out I had been to the hospital?”

  “I have no doubt that something illegal is going on,” he said patiently, “and that you have inadvertently become enmeshed in it. But you have no more evidence now than you did when you arrived in Monterrey. I am telling you: the vials contained vaccine.”

  I slammed the phone down, waited for the operator to ring me back and give me the charges, deposited a handful of quarters, and stalked back to the car. Joan took one look at the expression on my face and had enough sense to keep quiet and leave me alone until we got back to her place. I slammed the door behind me as I followed her in and began stalking furiously around the apartment. Even fat old Bingo kept out of my way.

  “All right,” she said, after I had paced back and forth for about five minutes. “You seem minimally calmer now. What seems to be the problem?”

  “Someone on his staff is on the take and that idiot Vallero is too goddamned pigheaded to admit it.”

  “Who’s Vallero?”

  “A Mexican cop who’s sitting on my evidence.” I stopped pacing long enough to pour myself a drink, and then turned to her. “I hate to ask it, Joan, but I need another big favor.”

  “What is it?” she said suspiciously.

  “Is there someone around here that you trust? Really trust?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” I walked into the bedroom and pulled a pair of vials out of my old pants. Then I went back out to the living room and handed them to her. “Tell your friend to deliver these to Mike Pratt of the Casa Grande Police. It’s got to be done in person, and I don’t want them left on his desk or with an assistant. They’ve got to be hand-delivered.” I pulled out my Shell credit card. “Give this to your friend, too; it’ll pay for the gas.”

  “Why can’t I deliver them myself?”

  “Because there’s a chance that anyone who visits Pratt will be followed, and if they find out I’m here you’re going to be in as much trouble as I am.”

  “What about my friend?”

  “If he or she goes back to an empty house, or at least one that I’m not in, chances are nothing will happen.”

  “Do you have any message to go with the vials?”

  “Yeah. Can I borrow a piece of paper?”

  She brought me one, plus a pen, and I sat down at the dining room table and scribbled a note to Pratt, telling him that the key to the whole case was in the vials and to personally supervise the lab work on them.

  She made a quick phone call and left with the vials, and I watched the first half of a soap opera on the tube until she returned. My arms and side were throbbing again, and my eye was starting to smart, but on the whole I was feeling pretty good. After all, Pratt would have his hands on the stuff in an hour or two, and by dinnertime every cop in Arizona and Mexico would know what was going on. And once that happened, I’d be just an unimportant little private eye again, and the heat would be off.

  I should have known that nothing about this case was going to be that easy.

  12.

  Joan came back just as Young Mary Blakely was trying to decide which of six local and two long-distance candidates was the father of her unborn baby, and Tough Timothy Mullens was about to put his life savings into the pot of a decidedly crooked poker game. I turned off the set, regretful only of missing another look down Young Mary’s neckline.

  “It’s done?” I asked.

  “Of course,” she said. She sat down next to me with a sigh. “You’ve given me a busy morning, Eli.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Stop apologizing,” she said with a smile. “If I didn’t want to do all this, I wouldn’t have.” She stared at me for a long minute. “God, but you’re a sight!”

  She leaned over and kissed me gently on the lips.

  I flinched.

  “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” she said.

  “That puts you in a minority these days,” I replied.

  “What did happen to you down in Mexico?”

  “It was forcibly impressed upon me that I’m never going to be the heavyweight champion of the world,” I said wryly.

  “How did you get away?” she persisted. “You must have been half-dead.”

  “Pure desperation,” I said. “Does that tarnish my heroic image?”

  “Who wants heroes?” she said with a smile. “I wouldn’t know how to behave with one.”

  “Well, it’s not a situation you’re likely to come to grips with in the foreseeable future.” I shifted uncomfortably. “Damn! I’ll be glad when I can have these stitches pulled!”

  “How much longer do they stay in?”

  “Four more days,” I said.

  “Who is this Doctor Marcus anyway?” she asked. “I’ve got vets who can sew up a wound better than he did.”

  “He was working at a disadvantage,” I explained. “I’d been on the run for a couple of days before I found him.”

  “You mean you spent two entire days running around like that before you saw a doctor?” She looked about as upset as I guessed she was capable of looking.

  “Well, a day and a half, anyway. You would have been proud of me, though: I spent the first night in a dog house.”

  “God!” she said. “I just hope Maury Nettles is paying you five thousand dollars a day!”

  “I hope so, too,” I said, “but I rather suspect that he isn’t. Besides, I haven’t done him a bit of good. I may have unearthed a drug ring, but I still don’t know what the hell happened to Baroness.”

  “I ca
n’t imagine what a show dog had to do with a drug ring,” she said.

  “Neither can I,” I answered. “It makes my head hurt just to think about it.” I lit a cigarette and took a deep drag. “Jesus, will I be glad when this case is over! I swear I’ll never complain about spying on unfaithful husbands and wives again as long as I live.”

  “By the way, doesn’t Ohio have no-fault divorces?”

  “I think every state has them these days.”

  “Then why all the spying?”

  “Child custody and property settlements,” I said. “Anyone can get divorced, but not anyone can take their spouses to the cleaners.”

  “Ah!” she said. “Now I understand. Do you ever take films?”

  “I’m a detective, not a pornographer,” I said, which was as nifty an evasion as I could come up with on the spur of the moment.

  “If your friend Mike Pratt finds what you think he’ll find in those little vials, will you be leaving soon?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It all depends on Nettles. As long as he’s willing to pay me to hunt for Baroness, I’ll stay on the job. I feel sorry for the guy: here he is, shelling out good money for me to find his dog, and instead I crack a dope ring on his time.” I shrugged. “Well, maybe someday somebody will pay me to track down a killer and I’ll find a dog.” I snubbed out the cigarette. “I just wish I knew what one had to do with the other.”

  Bingo started whining just then, and Joan got up and let him out into her fenced yard. A moment later he came back in, panting and drooling from the midday heat, and lay down over one of the air-conditioning vents in the floor. Joan put down a fresh bowl of water for him in the kitchen, but he just looked at her, snorted once, and went to sleep.

  “Do you own a dog, Eli?” she asked, joining me on the couch again.

  I shook my head. “I’m never home. Besides, I don’t think they’re allowed in my building.”

  “You have an apartment?”

  “A modest one, “ I said. “I’m never there except to sleep.” And sometimes not even then, I added mentally, depending on whether the rent is overdue.