Rubbed Out

by Barbara Block

  The woman took a few steps toward us. Her hair was black. She had prominent cheekbones. I saw her mouth moving, but I couldn’t hear most of what she was saying because her voice was being drowned out by the noise the dogs were making. But then she changed her mind because she whirled around and headed back inside her house instead. I didn’t know what she was going to do, but I did know I didn’t want to be around to see.

  “Come on,” I said to Calli. “Let’s go.”

  We ran for the hole in the fence. Lily bounded along beside us. Delirious with joy, she was wagging her tail so hard, it was difficult for her to move and Calli had to keep urging her forward.

  When we got to my car, I threw the bolt cutters in the back seat and Tiger Lily hopped in after them, while Calli and I got in the front. A moment later, Lily jumped up front and started lapping Calli’s chin. Calli was laughing and trying to push her away, but it’s hard to overcome a determined golden retriever.

  After a couple of tries I managed to extract my cell phone from under Lily’s ample rump and call Animal Control. Then I drove Calli and Lily home.

  “Don’t lie to me next time,” I said to Calli as she got out of the car.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. Miss Meekness. But I could tell from the expression on her face that she was glad she’d done what she had.

  I turned around and drove back to the house we’d just left. I wanted to make sure that Animal Control showed up, because sometimes they didn’t.

  This time the truck showed up twenty minutes later. I got out of my car and explained the situation to the officer. He was a tall, stoop-shouldered man who looked as if he’d been doing this job for too long. He shook his head when he saw the backyard.

  “People,” he said in disgust. “I don’t know why they say we’re the higher species. Last week, I found twenty dogs in a basement. No food. No water. We had to put most of them down.”

  He clamped his lips together, marched toward the house, and knocked. The door opened. The woman who’d shaken a broom at us, as well as a skinny, light-complexioned kid who I put at about twenty-one, came out.

  “Madam,” he said, “I’m Officer Driscoll from Animal Control, and I’d like to talk to you about the dogs you’ve got in your backyard.”

  “What about them?” the woman said. By now she’d changed into gray sweats.

  “They look in pretty bad shape.”

  The kid gave Driscoll a sullen stare. “They’re fine.”

  “Perhaps we can discuss this inside,” Driscoll said.

  “Fuck you,” the kid said. Then he looked up and spotted me. “She’s the one you should be hassling.” He pointed a finger in my direction. “She stole a dog from us.”

  “She’s the one who lodged the complaint,” Driscoll said.

  “You believe her ’cause she’s white.”

  “Yeah,” Driscoll replied. “That’s it.”

  “She did,” the woman said. “I saw her and her friend take one of my dogs.”

  “Did you steal a dog from them?” Driscoll turned and asked me.

  “Absolutely not,” I replied, giving him my most winning smile.

  “There you go,” Driscoll said to the boy and the woman. “Now, are you going to let me in there or am I going to have to call the cops?”

  “You got no call to take our animals,” the boy said. “We love them.”

  Driscoll grimaced. “If this is love, give me hate. So what’s it gonna be?” he asked when the kid didn’t answer. “You gonna let me in or not?”

  “Not.” And the kid ran back in the house.

  “Damn,” Driscoll said as the woman followed, slamming the door behind her. “My wife said my horoscope was predicting this was going to be a bad day.”

  The dogs in the backyard were still barking as the woman yelled through the door, “You better get out of here ’cause I got a gun and I sure do know how to use it.”

  “Great. Fiiggin’ great. I got Annie Oakley here. What I want to know,” Driscoll said to me as we walked toward his truck, “is how come I get all the morons.”

  I didn’t have an answer, though it was a question I’d often asked myself.

  Chapter Three

  “You sure took long enough,” Manuel told me as I walked into Noah’s Ark. He was playing with one of the red-tailed boas we’d gotten in on trade a couple of weeks ago.

  In all, it had taken a little over two hours for the police to talk the woman and the boy into coming out and to load the dogs in the truck.

  “The situation was a little more complicated than I expected.”

  Manuel snorted as the snake slithered up his arm.

  “It always is with you.”

  “There were five other dogs out there with Tiger Lily. I had to wait for Animal Control to come take them.”

  “That sucks. Were they in bad shape?”

  “How happy would you be chained outside without any shelter, food, or water?”

  “Someone should take a baseball bat to people who do things like that,” Manuel commented as the boa wound itself around his upper arm.

  “I think this woman is crazy.” I peeled off my gloves and stuffed them in my pocket.

  “And that makes what she did okay?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “But you got Lily?” Manuel asked as Zsa Zsa came out of the back room.

  “When have I ever not accomplished what I set out to do?”

  “Excuse me,” Manuel said. “I forgot I was talking to Wonder Woman.”

  “Well, don’t,” I told him as I laid the bolt cutter on the counter and bent down to pet Zsa Zsa. She jumped up and lapped my chin. I rubbed the fur behind her ears for a little while before straightening up.

  “And she’s okay?”

  “She’s fine.”

  “How about the other dogs?”

  “They looked worse than they are.”

  Manuel unwound the boa. It started moving toward his neck.

  “Now me,” he said. “I would have lifted Lily over the fence instead of using those.”

  He nodded in the direction of the bolt cutters. When you’re seventeen, you think you know everything.

  “She weighs over a hundred pounds.”

  “I could do that easy.”

  “Really? You weigh what? One-forty?”

  He bristled and indicated my left hand. “At least then you wouldn’t have gotten that.”

  I glanced down. I had a nasty gash on my thumb. I must have done it on the edge of the metal when I was trying to bend the links back. Suddenly my thumb began to throb. I rubbed it. Funny how things like that work. Something not bothering you until you know about it.

  “That guy with the tattoo of a cross on his cheek was in,” Manuel continued as the snake curled around his neck and began slithering down his shirt. “He wants to sell you some more angelfish.”

  “If he comes back, tell him the last fish he sold me had ick. Anything else?”

  “Yeah.” Manuel scratched his goatee. “El Pendejo called. He says he has a job for you.” Pendejo is Spanish for putz, Manuel’s favorite name for Paul Santini.

  “Did he say what kind of job?”

  “No. But he wants you to get in touch with him ASAP.” Manuel pulled the snake out of his shirt by his tail and put him back on his arm. “I didn’t think you were talking to him anymore.”

  “Santini?”

  “No. The snake.”

  “That was last month.”

  “You should keep it that way.”

  “Why don’t you like him?”

  Manuel grimaced. “What’s to like? The guy’s a schmuck. He thinks he’s friggin’ Christ Almighty.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far.”

  “I would.” Manuel did an imitation of Santini’s New Jersey accent. “ ‘Make sure you tell her I called or I’m gonna come down and tan your ass.’ I mean, what’s that about?”

  “You could try giving me his messages.”

  Manuel grinned. “
Then he should be nicer.”

  “So should you.” I was picking up my backpack when Manuel said, “How much you think Lily’s pups are going to go for?”

  “Why? You want one?”

  “No. Bethany does.”

  I groaned. Bethany was Manuel’s girlfriend. Under-aged girlfriend. Right now she was living with Manuel’s mother because she’d gotten kicked out of her nice middle-class suburban house.

  “Her birthday’s coming up.”

  “We’ll talk later.” Manuel opened his mouth. “Later,” I repeated.

  Otherwise I’d say something I’d regret.

  “Fine,” Manuel said and ostentatiously turned away from me and started talking to the snake.

  I didn’t care. I went into the back room, poured myself a cup of coffee, and unwrapped the Snickers bar I’d bought earlier in the day. It was a little late for lunch, but what the hell. A girl’s got to keep her strength up.

  Paul Santini is an ex-cop who’d opened up his own shop a couple of years ago. He was an old friend of George’s—they met on the force—but the friendship had ended when I slept with him.

  I was pissed with George for walking out on me, and Paul was convenient, the closest guy around who was expressing an interest in me. So I was getting even. So what. Lots of people have done lots worse. The sex we had wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good either. I’m not sorry it happened, but the fact that I do work for him means there are more levels to deal with than I’d like.

  Paul specializes in security work, with a sprinkling of missing children and matrimonial stuff thrown in. He’s licensed and bonded and advertises in the yellow pages and does all the rest of that professional stuff. Unlike me, who is unlicensed and get my jobs strictly through word-of-mouth referrals.

  A while back my husband Murphy died and I inherited Noah’s Ark. Not that I wanted to run a pet store, but I couldn’t sell the place without taking a big loss. To make matters worse, one of my employees was killed and I was tapped for the murder. It’s amazing what you can do when your ass is on the line. I discovered I had an aptitude for survival I didn’t know I possessed. All those investigative skills I used as a reporter leaped into action.

  I’ve been doing it part-time ever since in a low-key kind of way. I like finding things out and fitting those pieces together. Helping people now and then doesn’t hurt either. I figure it helps with my karmic debt. Which is huge. I handle missing children and animals and the occasional missing spouse.

  Once in a while I help Santini out. He pays me fairly well and, more importantly, he’ll run checks for me on his computer. Of course I could get my own. I’m probably the only person in the known universe who isn’t wired, but right now my cell phone is as far as I’m prepared to go technology-wise. It startles me to think that in my heart I’m a conservative instead of the liberal I always believed myself to be.

  A couple of months ago, out of curiosity, I’d paid $39.95 to an on-line company to write a report about me. The next day they e-mailed me the result. It included my complete credit history as well as a list of every place I’d lived in the past eight years. And that list included the names, addresses, and phone numbers of all my neighbors. It was very impressive. And even though this kind of thing makes my job easier, it scares the hell out of me.

  I was eating the last bit of my candy when Manuel popped his head in the back. “So what does he want?”

  I threw the wrapper in the trash and licked my fingers.

  “I haven’t called him yet. Why do you care anyway?”

  “I figured maybe there’ll be something in it for me.”

  “I thought you said he was an asshole.”

  Manuel shrugged. “He is, but if I only did business with the people I liked, I wouldn’t be doing any at all.”

  A demonstration of trickle-down economics at its finest. I work for Santini and Manuel works for me.

  They say pain bonds and maybe it does because Manuel and I had been shot by the same person and become friends when we were in the hospital recovering. Hobbling around the corridors together, we found we liked each other. I still can’t figure out why. A highschool dropout, Manuel gets by doing a little of this and a little of that. Most of what he does is in the gray area between legal and illegal, although he’s not averse to stepping over the line and has therefore acquired a fairly sophisticated knowledge of the judicial system.

  He sure as hell knows more about what’s going on in the street than I do, and he’ll share that knowledge with me for a fee. Nothing Manuel does is for free. He’s the quintessential entrepreneur. Right now he’s working at the store for me while Tim is on vacation. I’ve offered to hire him on a permanent basis, but Manuel doesn’t want to be tied down.

  He prefers to drift in and out with the tides. Sleeping at different people’s places, owning nothing, borrowing what he needs, ready to move at a moment’s notice, waiting for his big opportunity, the one that’s going to let him buy his SUV

  I can’t do that anymore. I’ve gotten to the point where I need a certain degree of permanence. Maybe that’s what middle age is all about—sleeping in your own bed at night and being happy about it.

  I poured myself another cup of coffee, cleaned out the cut on my hand, picked up the phone, and called Santini. We arranged a meeting at his office down at the State Tower Building for six.

  I was fifteen minutes late.

  Chapter Four

  The State Tower Building was constructed in the thirties. It would make a great movie set. It still has the marble paneling, the carved wooden ceiling, and the art deco lamps that define the architecture of that period. Unfortunately, Paul’s office doesn’t follow suit. It has a jerry-rigged feel to it. Definitely not the kind of place that would inspire me to spill my guts out, but I guess I’m in the minority because he does a pretty good business.

  I walked through the waiting room with its lone picture and pushed open the door to the main office without bothering to knock. Today the place smelled of pepperoni pizza. Other days it smells of fried chicken or meatball subs. That’s one of the things I like about Paul—he’s not a health food nazi.

  Paul was sitting at his desk fiddling with his computer. The wheels on his chair squeaked as he turned to look at me.

  “What if I’d been with a client?”

  “But you’re not.”

  Santini looked like what he was: an ex-cop. He was heavyset. Big hands. Beefy features. Going to seed around the middle. What was it that had attracted me to him? Not his looks, that was for sure. Maybe his air of confidence. Maybe that’s what I’d liked about George. God, just the thought of George made me want to reach for a cigarette. I wondered how many patches you could wear without getting sick. I took a deep breath and thought of other things.

  The desk, the file cabinets, the couple of pieces of bad art on the wall, the run-down sofa, and the chairs hadn’t changed since the last time I’d been there. Add in Paul’s license, computer and printer, and the coffeemaker, and you had the sum and substance of his furnishings. The only thing new was the spider plant, and that was dying. I pointed to it.

  “Maybe you should try plastic.”

  “I’ll take it under advisement. You gonna take off your jacket or what?”

  I realized I still had my ski parka on. I unzipped it, threw it on the sofa, and sat down in the chair next to his desk.

  Paul leaned back in his chair and rested his right calf on his left knee. “So how are things going?”

  “They’re goin’ the same way they always do.”

  Someone was yelling at someone on the sidewalk outside.

  “They put a food pantry near here and then they wonder why no one comes downtown,” Paul said. “By the way,” he added. “You look like shit.”

  “Thanks. I like a man who gives me compliments.”

  “We should get together.”

  “We are.”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  “I know.”

  Paul ti
lted his chair back even further, folded his hands, and rested them on his belly while he regarded me. “You see George recently?”

  “Why? What do you care?”

  Paul picked at a nail. “Just making conversation.”

  “How about we stick to business?”

  “Fine. If that’s the way you want it.”

  “That’s the way I want it.”

  He straightened up, turned around, and reached for a folder that was lying on his desk. “I’m surprised you got the message.”

  “I am too. You’re not on Manuel’s favorite-person list.”

  “I spend nights worrying about it.”

  “You should be nicer to him.”

  “I’ve known lots of Manuels. Sooner or later they all end up in the shit pile.”

  “Maybe they wouldn’t if you gave them a chance.”

  “People make their own chances.” Paul opened the folder and took the top page out. “Feel like earning a little extra cash?”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “Something simple. Walter Wilcox. His wife’s gone missing. I thought maybe you’d be interested in finding her for him.”

  “Why don’t you want it?”

  “Always suspicious. Because I’m up to my neck with an insurance fraud scam and I don’t have the time. Being a nice guy, I thought of you.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Go over and talk to Wilcox, see what he has to say.”

  “Fifty-fifty split?”

  Paul grinned. “I can find someone to do it cheaper.” “But then you wouldn’t get to see me.”

  “True.” He handed me the paper. “Everything you need is on it. After you talk to Wilcox, we can discuss the case over a drink at my place.”

  “Don’t you ever stop?”

  “No. Not until I get what I want. That’s why I’m a success.”

  “Because you wear women down?”

  “You shouldn’t be so negative. You should give things a chance.”

  “I have.”

  “Not really. You don’t know what you’re missing. I was just hitting my stride.”

  “I’ll call you after I speak to Wilcox.”

  Paul shrugged. “Suit yourself. But remember I’m always here for you. I’m not asking you to change, like some people I could mention.”