Jim Knighthorse Series: First Three Books

by J. R. Rain

  I continued on, pushing through the nausea and the seagull crap, dismissing boat after boat until a sound reached me.

  I paused, listening hard.

  There it was again.

  The whining of a dog. Stray dogs in Mexico are nothing new. Stray dogs whining several hundred feet out on a pier was something else entirely.

  I picked up my pace, following the sound. And the closer I got to it, the more emphatic the whining got. Someone shouted at the dog and the whining briefly stopped.

  Now I was running, feet pounding on the wobbling pier, which juked and jived with each step. My nausea was long forgotten. The pain in my bad leg was alarming. On the pier next to me, in my peripheral vision, I saw Sanchez turn toward me. Peripheral because I had to keep my eyes focused on the narrow pier. Wouldn’t do to take a wrong step and dive into the filthy muck. Without looking at him, I waved him over. Emphatically.

  He must have gotten the hint because he disappeared out of my vision. I picked up my pace.

  And there it was, just a few feet away. Son-of-a-bitch.

  It had to be it. The length and general size felt right, and the name on the stern said it all. La Bonita.

  The whining turned to yelping.

  Another shout, followed by the stomping of feet going up a wooden flight of stairs. The boat shook with each step. I leaped from the pier, over the bulwark and landed awkwardly on the deck, my bad leg nearly giving out.

  And what I found there, I would never forget.

  Ever.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  A man appeared from the lower cabin.

  The man, who hadn’t looked very happy to start with, blinked once. His mouth dropped open. He looked utterly perplexed to see a massive Caucasian standing in his boat. His perplexity might have been comical if he hadn’t been holding a very long carving knife.

  I couldn’t tell if he was the same guy who’d sported the neat part down the center of his head—since this guy’s hair was in current disarray—but if I was a betting man, I would bet that he was.

  Just as his shock turned to rage, he launched himself out of the lower cabin, bringing the knife up in a gutting motion. Unlike the helpless sharks he was used to carving up, I could fight back.

  And I wasn’t so helpless.

  Before the knife got very far, my fist flashed through the small space between us and hit him under his left eye. His head snapped back. His feet flew out from under him. Where the knife went, I didn’t know. One moment he was attacking me and the next, he was tumbling back down the stairs from whence he came.

  I followed him down, jumping down just behind him. The interior cabin was surprisingly big and roomy enough even for me. But that didn’t mean the place wasn’t trashed. It was. Disgustingly so. Cots lined one wall. The opposite had a small but filthy futon. A TV was in one corner. Trash was everywhere. Wadded-up, greasy tinfoils. Wadded up, greasy burger wrappers. Wadded up paper bags. Ironically, a trash can—apparently bolted to the floor—stood empty nearby. Somebody around here was a shitty shot.

  Still lying in the center of the floor, bleeding profusely from a humdinger of a cut under his eye, was a Grade-A asshole. Beyond, a woman peeked out at me from behind a cabin door. I motioned for her to get back into the room and she did, slamming the door shut.

  It was about then that Sanchez appeared behind me, breathing hard. He ducked his head into the cabin, saw the scene, and leaped down smoothly.

  “Is he the only one?” he asked, pointing to the dirt bag on the floor.

  “A woman’s in there,” I said, pointing.

  “That’s it?”

  “Far as I know. Boat isn’t that big.”

  Sanchez nodded once. “I’ll look around.”

  As Sanchez ducked away, the man lying on the floor began waking up. The boat rocked as Sanchez moved around above deck. The man on the floor groaned and sat up on an elbow.

  “Hola, motherfucker,” I said. “You speak English?”

  The man said nothing. His eyes still looked a little crossed. His hands, I saw, were crisscrossed with scars. Fishing lines? Shark bites? Zipper malfunctions?

  Sanchez appeared again.

  “Clean,” he said. “Except...”

  My friend looked away and pressed his teeth together. His jawline rippled.

  “Except what?”

  “I think you should see this.” He didn’t look at me.

  I reached down and grabbed the guy by the shoulders and pulled him up to his feet. He was bigger than I realized, easily over six feet. Paunchy around the middle. Muscular shoulders. He came willingly enough but there was still some fight in him. I shoved him in front of me, up the stairs, where Sanchez briefly took over, grabbing him from me.

  On the deck, Sanchez pointed to what had once been covered under a tarp. Now one corner of the tarp was pulled up.

  Something with bright, sad eyes was watching me from inside.

  Chapter Thirty

  Watching me...and whimpering.

  I knew it was there. I had heard it, after all. But seeing the little guy inside the cage, watching me, was a different story altogether.

  With Sanchez holding the shark hunter back, I slowly approached the cage. Once there, I knelt down, took one corner of the tarp...steeled myself...and lifted.

  There wasn’t much light in this godforsaken place, but there was enough for me to see the scruffy dog inside. It was a mutt through and through. Curly, entangled hair. Eye goop caked from the corner of its eyes all the way down its muzzle.

  Its muzzle. Oh, sweet Jesus.

  I leaned down closer toward the dog, and as I did so, the man behind me made a move, but Sanchez slammed him hard back against the cabin wall.

  The dog. Something was gleaming from his muzzle. Something metallic and curved and reddish. Then again, my eyes have always played tricks on me, at least when it came to color.

  But the smell that wafted up to me was unmistakable.

  The rotten fish was a given. Hell, the whole damn marina smelled like rotten fish. No, what I was smelling now was blood. Fresh blood. Coppery, sharp, pungent.

  I pulled the tarp all the way off. The mangy mutt shrank back. Or tried to. Something was wrong with his little paws. Something clank and even seemed to catch on the cage. Not its nails. No. Again, something metal. I was sure of it.

  The shark hunter continued to struggle with Sanchez, who promptly slammed him once more against the cabin’s exterior. This time, the entire boat shuddered with the impact. Water slapped the hull. I heard the woman crying from below deck.

  The mangy dog, which probably weighed about thirty pounds, shrank down into a small, tangled ball of fur. It shook violently. Its shaking vibrated down through the wooden deck. The metal cage shook, as well.

  I moved in closer. “It’s okay, boy.”

  Now I could smell the urine and see the piles of crap littering the cage. Much of the crap looked like diarrhea.

  Where the dog had once been standing were fresh paw prints. Bloody paw prints, and now I could clearly see why. Massive, rusted hooks protruded from its front paws. It made walking or standing for the creature not only torturous but nearly impossible. It huddled low, shaking uncontrollably, alternately whining and growling.

  There was, of course, another hook. And this was the one that threw me into a blind rage. Another hook, as big or bigger than the ones in its front paws, protruded through its upper lip, hanging down like a metallic mustache. The world’s sickest joke.

  Except this wasn’t a joke.

  This was real. This dog was bait. Plain and simple. Its suffering meant nothing to the shark hunter. I was tempted to reach in for the dog but I was certain of a few things. First, it was going to attack me, as the creature was nearly out of its mind with fear. And second, it needed to be sedated to remove the hooks.

  I stood slowly and turned, shaking nearly uncontrollably myself. I pointed to the shark hunter. “Let him go,” I said to Sanchez.

  But my friend shoo
k his head. “You’ll kill him, man.”

  “Let him go.”

  But Sanchez shook his head. “I can’t do that, Jim. If I let him go, then you’ll never leave this country again.”

  “Fuck him.”

  “I agree,” said Sanchez, who had placed his body between the man and myself. “But he’s not worth it, man. He’s just a shit bag. Shit bags aren’t worth going to jail for the rest of your life.”

  My frustration was nearly overwhelming. Frustration and anger. I stepped up to the guy currently pinned against the wall by Sanchez’s forearm. There was no fear in him; in fact, he was grinning at me. Although I doubted he recognized me, I was now certain he was the same piece of shit who had removed the hammerhead’s fins, the same piece of shit who had dumped the still-living and helpless shark back into the ocean. The same piece of shit who had grinned at me in much the same way.

  “Translate this for me,” I said to Sanchez. He nodded and I went on, speaking slowly enough that Sanchez wouldn’t miss a word. “If I ever see you within a hundred feet of a dog, cat, or fucking hamster, I will come for you. If I ever see you hunting sharks or even sardines, I will come for you. Do you understand, motherfucker?”

  He blinked, waiting for Sanchez to finish translating. Then he grinned again, wider, and hocked a nasty lugie straight into my face.

  “Okay, one punch,” said Sanchez, “and make it a good one.”

  He released the guy, who charged me instantly. One punch for every dog to have ever been thrown overboard to the sharks. One punch for every shark who’d been butchered alive.

  One punch didn’t settle the score.

  But it sure as hell felt good.

  I hit him just under his right eye, so hard that I heard his cheekbone shatter. His legs turned to rubber and he promptly sank to the deck where he lay unmoving.

  Breathing, but unmoving.

  Sanchez nodded, impressed. “Helluva punch.”

  Chapter Thirty-one

  I gave my statement to the Ensenada police investigator in charge, a Detective Hermenio.

  I told Hermenio that I was a private investigator working on a murder case. I told him everything I knew, or thought he needed to know, and told him that my investigation had led me here to Mexico. Detective Hermenio, an older guy who spoke fluent English, asked if the guy on the boat was a suspect. I told him it was still early in the investigation.

  Meaning, no.

  He let it drop, maybe because Sanchez was an investigator with the LAPD. Or maybe because he recognized a low-life scumbag when he saw one. Truth was, I had no business being on the shark hunter’s boat, who had every right to protect himself. Basically, I had assaulted a man defending his own property.

  A man who had caged and tortured a dog on his property.

  Sometimes cops look the other way. Sometimes laws fly out the window when something heinous has been committed. In Mexico, animal cruelty laws were vague. But they were in place, and the language of the law was simple: “no unnecessary suffering.” A bleeding and caged dog with hooks in its muzzles and paws certainly qualified.

  Not to mention, one didn’t need a law to see the extent of the cruelty.

  Right is right. Wrong is wrong.

  Sure, I had overstepped my bounds, and had Sanchez not been here, I could have very easily ended up in a Mexican jail. But I wasn’t in a jail.

  Instead, I was in a brightly-lit veterinarian’s waiting room in Ensenada, a twenty-four hour emergency clinic. After the police had cited Juan Trinidad for animal cruelty, he was taken away in an ambulance to treat his broken face. Next, they had carefully loaded the caged and terrified animal, and delivered it to the local vet.

  Which is where Sanchez and I were waiting now.

  My big, Latino friend was sitting back on the wooden bench, eyes closed, long legs stretched straight, crossed at the ankles. He looked asleep, but I knew he wasn’t. My friend had an uncanny ability to rest and be alert at the same time. We were alone in the small waiting room, which wasn’t much of a surprise since it was just a little past three in the morning.

  “You got lucky,” said Sanchez without opening his eyes.

  “I’ve been told that before.”

  “I saved your ass.”

  “That’s why I keep you around,” I said.

  We were silent some more. I heard someone talking urgently behind a closed door that led deeper into the facility. A plump woman with round cheeks sat behind a desk. She wore a powder blue uniform that seemed to be the mandatory uniform of vet assistants everywhere.

  “Detective Hermenio says he’ll come down on the bastard as much as he can, but something like this only carries about a $30 fine.”

  “So he’ll keep the boat?”

  “No doubt.”

  “And still hunt sharks.”

  “I’m guessing yes.”

  “So what did we accomplish?”

  “You broke his face,” said Sanchez.

  “That felt good,” I said.

  “And saved a dog.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I did.”

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Cindy and I were in my apartment in Huntington Beach.

  It was two days since my return from Mexico, and my life had taken an interesting turn. Mainly, I was now the proud owner of perhaps the world’s most damaged dog.

  Cindy was sitting at the marble-top counter, drinking wine. She seemed to be enjoying the wine. Go figure. Every now and then she would look off down the hallway where small, pitiful sounds occasionally emitted. Cindy had come over bearing tin dishes filled with veggie burritos, topped with cheese, guacamole, and sour cream.

  “You didn’t have to order yourself a vegetable burrito,” I said. We were sitting next to each other at the counter. A half-full glass of Tecate was foaming comfortingly in front of me. I had taken to the stuff.

  “I like veggie burritos,” she said. And to her credit, she was attacking it energetically, despite the distraction of the whimpering dog in the next room.

  “Since when?”

  “Since forever.”

  “I’ve never seen you order a veggie burrito before. Chicken, yes. Beef, yes. Carnitas, yes. Even lobster.” I shuddered slightly at the thought. Years ago, I had tried it. Hideous.

  “Okay, okay, I ordered it today because...it seemed like a good idea. Maybe you’re rubbing off on me. But don’t expect a complete change. I like my meat.”

  I nodded, pleased for some reason. I took a big swig of beer. “Well, as long as you know I’m not encouraging you one direction or the other. What you eat is up to you.”

  “Agreed,” said Cindy, then looked over at me, then laughed. “It’s hard to take you seriously when you’re sporting a foam mustache.”

  “Being taken seriously is overrated.”

  She used a napkin to wipe my upper lip. “The burrito just sounded...good. And kind of healthy.”

  “They are good and healthy,” I said.

  “Just as long as you don’t expect me to suddenly...convert,” she said.

  “It’s not a religion. If anyone should know that, it’s you.”

  “I like my fish,” she said.

  “Good for you.”

  “Sometimes I like chicken.”

  “I understand that.”

  “I don’t want to feel guilty if I eat it in front of you.”

  “No guilt,” I said.

  “Sometimes I’ll order vegetarian,” she said. “But only sometimes.”

  “Sometimes is good.”

  She took another bite, and washed it down with some wine. “So when do I get to meet Jimmy Junior?”

  “That’s up to him,” I said.

  “And he still hasn’t come out of the closet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “What does he do if you get too close to him?”

  “Growls at me...and means it.”

  “And where’s he going to the bathroom?”

  “Let’s just say I can kiss my deposit goodby
e. And a lot of shoes as well.”

  She nodded. “So he’s yours now?”

  “It’s the only way I can guarantee he’ll never be hurt again.”

  “And what if he never comes out of the closet?”

  “Then he will be safe in that closet forever.”

  She nodded and set aside her wine. “A better life, at least, than what he had.”

  I agreed. I drank more beer and listened to Junior’s whimpering. I had spent the better part of the past few days sitting on the floor across the doorway of my spare bedroom, reassuring Junior whenever he whimpered. I spent my time reading the newspaper and working the crosswords. Sometimes I sat quietly and closed my eyes and listened to the street sounds outside. I brought him water and food, but as far as I could tell, he had yet to eat or drink.

  The vets who had sedated and removed the hooks from Junior in Mexico had also been kind enough to wash and shampoo him. Granted, not so kind as to work out his many tangles, but I was hoping to get to that someday. They had given him all his shots, and given me some pain medication. They also gave me a sort of doggie Prozac that I hadn’t used yet, but was tempted to.

  Shortly, Cindy and I finished our dinners and retired to the living room where I had DVR’d some movies. We were halfway through a brain twister about dreams within dreams that I was beginning to think made no sense, when I heard a noise from the hallway. Cindy, whose head had been on my lap, perked up. She had heard it, too.

  “Is that—”

  “Shh.”

  She shushed, and now I could hear the claws on the wood floor. Hesitant at first. Actually, hesitant throughout. One slow step at a time. One slow, painful step at a time.

  I slowly...ever so slowly...turned my head...and saw the most pitiful creature I had ever seen in my life. Junior could barely stand, his leg muscles having atrophied in the cage. The little guy was shaking as bad as ever, or even worse.