Shoot the Dog

by Brad Smith

  “Bobby already?” Kari said. “That was quick.”

  “Bring on the boo,” Nicole said. “Maybe he’s got other goodies too.”

  Kari walked over and hit the intercom.

  “It’s Seth,” the voice said, and Kari buzzed him in.

  “You expecting him?” Nicole asked.

  “No,” Kari said. “Maybe the HBO offer came through. About time.”

  Seth arrived a minute later, looking hot and uncomfortable in a powder-blue suit and white shirt. His gray hair was plastered to his temples as if glued there. Kari gave him a hug, although she really didn’t want to. He was sticky with sweat.

  “You want wine?”

  “Water,” Seth said, and he sat down on the couch.

  “Hey Sethy,” Nicole said.

  “Yeah,” he said, looking at her unhappily.

  Kari brought him a bottle of water and he drank half of it in a gulp.

  “This a social call?” she asked.

  “No, it isn’t,” he replied.

  “You hear from HBO?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Is there another offer, then?” Kari asked. “I’m off probation, you know.”

  “Funny you should mention that,” Seth said, and he drank the rest of the bottle. “What were you girls up to today?”

  “Little shopping, little road tripping.”

  “You weren’t at Casey’s?”

  “Yeah, we stopped in,” Kari said. She glanced at Nicole.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Seth demanded, finally losing his demeanor. “I mean, what in the name of all that is fucked up in this world is wrong with you?”

  “Whoa,” Nicole said. “Dude.”

  But Seth didn’t look at her. His eyes were on Kari, who sat quietly across from him.

  “Beth called me,” Seth continued, dialing it back but just a bit. “You know—Beth who works at Casey’s and who is my wife’s close friend? And Beth tells me that a diamond necklace is missing from Casey’s. And Beth tells me that one of her girls was showing jewelry to the two of you this very afternoon. She was in fact showing you that very necklace this very afternoon. And now it is missing. So we need to figure out where that necklace went. Maybe Beth’s yappy Chihuahua ate that necklace. Maybe the Santa Monica winds swept through the store and blew that necklace out over the Pacific Ocean.”

  “What the fuck are you suggesting?” Nicole demanded.

  “You need to be quiet,” Seth said. “Unless, of course, you took the necklace. Did you take the necklace?”

  “I never took fuck all.”

  “Then be quiet.” Seth turned to Kari. “Beth is rather hoping that her yappy Chihuahua pukes the thing up, or that the winds blow it back into the store. That way she will not have to call the police and mention your name and by calling the police and mentioning your name involve every news agency from here to the planet Jupiter.”

  Kari shook her head. “I have no idea, man.”

  Seth sat looking at her, his breath coming in quick little spurts. He was still sweating, in spite of the frigid temperature in the room. He was staring at her as if willing the situation to an acceptable conclusion.

  “We were shopping,” Kari said slowly, as if reviewing her day in her head. “I had a couple bags with me when we went to Casey’s. The only thing I can think—wait a minute.”

  She got to her feet and went into her bedroom and stayed there for an appropriate length of time before returning with a diamond necklace in her hand.

  “It was in the bag with my new sweaters,” she said. “It must have dropped there after I tried it on.” She glared at Seth, suddenly defiant. “I’d like to know why the fucking salesgirl never noticed. Isn’t that her job?”

  Seth got heavily to his feet and held his hand out. Kari placed the necklace in it.

  “I will drop this off on my way home,” he said and started for the door.

  “Nothing from HBO?” Kari asked.

  Seth stopped with his hand on the door handle. He didn’t turn for a long moment, just stood there, looking at the flat white slab that was the door, as if there were something written there and he was taking time to read it. It was a full minute before he spoke.

  “Nothing from HBO,” he said, and he left.

  • • •

  Billy hated it when Ronnie made him take the limo into the drive-thru at McDonald’s. The turn was so tight that he always had to back up once or twice going in, pissing off the drivers behind him, the drivers who were no doubt wondering why somebody in a stretch limo was loading up on Egg McMuffins to begin with. Billy had offered time and again to park and walk inside for Ronnie’s order but the suggestion had never flown. Ronnie seemed to be of the opinion that the use of the drive-thru lane was one of his inalienable rights. Fine, but why not do it in a fucking pickup truck?

  Ronnie ordered the big breakfast, as he invariably did if they arrived before noon. He asked, as always, what Billy wanted and Billy, as always, asked for black coffee only. Billy hated McDonald’s food; the chicken had no taste and was the texture of gelatin, the beef was greasy and overcooked, and the eggs were just weird. Billy had an apple in his pocket and some granola bars in the glove compartment. Besides, he’d eaten breakfast three hours earlier when he got up.

  Once he shoehorned his way out of the parking lot, he headed for the site of the new golf course, on the acreage to the west of the casino. Billy had the partition window up, but he could imagine Ronnie in the back, vacuuming up the huge breakfast as they drove. Later, Billy would have to clean up the aftermath—wrappers, coffee and juice cups, Styrofoam containers.

  The day was going to be smoking hot again but it was icy cool in the big Cadillac. Ronnie was an air-conditioning freak. He insisted that the car be as cold as possible and his house on Mount Ransom was the same. That is, if you could call a redbrick castle with three stories, thirty rooms, eight bedrooms, and sixteen bathrooms a house. He kept the place as cold as the inside of the Caddy, in spite of the fact that he lived for the most part in the penthouse suite at the casino hotel. He might sleep at the house two or three nights a month, and to Billy’s thinking, that was a lot of wasted electricity, keeping the air going. But Ronnie never thought that way, not about anything. He’d grown up with nothing, he always said, and now he was just evening things out.

  The building site course was visible from a half mile away, as was the enormous sign out front that proclaimed:

  THE FUTURE HOME OF RED HAWK GOLF

  Billy drove in on the gravel road and parked in front of the half-constructed clubhouse. Earthmovers and bulldozers were at work everywhere and the stench of diesel exhaust hit him as he stepped out of the car. There had been no rain for days and the dust from the excavation hung in the air like a gritty mist. Billy knew he would be washing the limo later that day.

  He opened the door and Ronnie stepped out, wincing as the hot, grimy air hit him full on. The difference in temperature between the inside and outside of the limo must have been forty degrees. Ronnie was wearing black nylon shorts that reached his knees and a basketball-style tank top, with a picture of a snorting bison on the front. His sunglasses were pushed up into his thick hair and now he flipped them down.

  “Fuck me,” he said in reference to the heat.

  A short man in a white hard hat was standing alongside a worker on what would eventually be the first tee of the course, gesturing with a sweeping arm at the scalped earth that would in time become number one fairway. Ronnie started for them, glancing back.

  “Billy Boy, bring me a water from the back,” he said.

  When Billy caught up with Ronnie, he was talking to the man in the white hat, whom Billy knew to be the foreman on the site, although he’d never learned his name. Ronnie knew it, Billy was sure, but Ronnie insisted on calling the man Squirt, even to his face. Ronnie liked to assign nicknames, particularly when the name served to diminish or embarrass the person in question. Billy considered himself lucky to have esc
aped with Billy Boy.

  “It’s going to go right there,” Ronnie was telling the foreman.

  “And what is it again?” the foreman asked slowly.

  “A hawk.”

  “Made of what?”

  “Granite,” Ronnie told him. “I commissioned it yesterday. I found this red granite from a quarry in Kingston. Ontario, not New York.” Ronnie pointed again. “Right there. It’s gonna be a hawk taking flight, sixty feet high.”

  The foreman, thoroughly confused, took a moment. “You can’t put it there.”

  “Why not?”

  The foreman glanced at the worker he’d been talking to, then at Billy, as if Billy might help him out. That wasn’t going to happen. “That’s the first fairway,” he said finally. “It’s going to be in the way. How they supposed to tee off with a sixty-foot statue in the way?”

  “Let them figure it out,” Ronnie said. “They can either go over it or around it. I don’t give a shit what they do—it’s going to be the course signature. A big red hawk. It will be incredible. The most incredible opening hole in golf.”

  “But you—” the foreman began, then stopped, taking time either to tailor his argument or possibly to make sense of the whole situation. “Why not put it in front of the clubhouse, or out by the entrance?”

  “Because then there’s no guarantee it will be on TV when the PGA Tour plays here,” Ronnie said. He tapped his temple with his forefinger, emphasizing his genius. “We put it out in the fairway, and it’s gotta be on TV. Matter of fact, everybody’s going to be talking about it.”

  “They’ll be talking about it all right,” the foreman said.

  “It’s not for you to worry about, Squirt.”

  Billy saw the foreman flinch at the name. The man then glanced at the course, perhaps imagining the future statue blocking the future fairway.

  “Did you run this by McTavish?” he asked.

  “I don’t need to run it by anybody,” Ronnie said.

  “It’s his design.”

  “But my dime,” Ronnie said. “That’s the end of that story.”

  The foreman shrugged, as if announcing he wasn’t going to argue it anymore.

  “Come on,” Ronnie said. “There’s something else we need to talk about. The clubhouse walls are wrong.”

  “Wrong in what way?”

  “I’ll show you in what way,” Ronnie said.

  The foreman turned to the worker he’d been talking to earlier. The man had been standing there quietly the entire time. “You can start the drainage for the green,” the foreman said. “I’ll get back to you on the other.”

  The worker nodded. Billy watched as the two other men headed off for the clubhouse on the hill. The worker stepped forward.

  “Who was that?” he asked.

  Billy turned, surprised. “Ronnie Red Hawk.”

  “That guy?” the man repeated. “That guy’s Ronnie Red Hawk?”

  “That’s him.”

  “That guy’s not an Indian.”

  “I wouldn’t tell him that,” Billy said.

  • • •

  Ronnie led the way up the wide brick staircase and into the clubhouse, stopping just inside the cavernous lobby. The foreman tagged along, glancing quickly at his watch as he ascended the stairs. He had a busy day and was already behind. There was a crew with chain saws on the back nine, waiting to be told which trees to cut and which to spare.

  “This is what I’m talking about,” Ronnie said. “These walls are smooth.”

  “Yeah?”

  “They’re supposed to be rough. You know, like the walls of a canyon. So people feel like they’re out in the wilderness, like in Colorado, or New Mexico or someplace.”

  “It’s a golf course clubhouse,” the foreman said. “Not a theme park.”

  “It’s whatever I decide it will be, Squirt,” Ronnie told him. “If I decide to graze a herd of buffalo here in the lobby, I will.”

  “All right, give me a minute,” the foreman said. He pulled his phone from a holder on his belt and moved a few steps away while he punched in a number.

  Ronnie took a walk through the lobby and had a look inside the restaurant and bar area. A half-dozen workers were laying the marble floor. Ronnie stood there watching until the foreman came up behind him.

  “Okay, I see what happened,” the man said. “They were going to do the stone finish but then you decided that the lobby walls are going to be covered with murals.”

  “Oh yeah,” Ronnie said excitedly. He led the way back into the lobby. “This artist from South Dakota is doing them. A Brule Sioux. Incredible talent. Incredible.”

  “So,” the foreman said slowly, as if explaining two plus two to a toddler. “The thinking was . . . if we’re not going to see the walls, why go to the expense of the stone finish?”

  Ronnie took a moment. “You don’t have to see something to know it’s there,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Canyon walls are canyon walls, whether you see them or not. Like the spirits all around us. I can’t see them but I know they’re there. Do you believe in the spirit world?”

  The foreman exhaled. “I believe in getting this job done on time. And on budget.”

  Ronnie stepped to the wall nearest them and ran his hand over the smooth surface before shaking his head. “Who made the call on the finish?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Find out,” Ronnie said. “I want to talk to him. I’m not leaving here until this thing is resolved.”

  The foreman took his phone out again. As he entered in a number, Ronnie’s phone rang. Ronnie answered.

  “Red Hawk here.”

  The foreman’s call was still going through and he moved away.

  “Marvin,” Ronnie said into the phone. “What’s going on, Slick?” Ronnie listened for thirty seconds or so. “On my way,” he said and hung up.

  As Ronnie started for the entranceway, the foreman was closing his phone. “Wilson’s coming over to talk to you about this,” he said.

  “About what?” Ronnie asked.

  “About the walls,” the foreman said, his voice disbelieving.

  “Don’t worry about it, Squirt. The murals will cover everything anyway.”

  SIX

  Sam went to the casino by herself, heading out at eleven in the morning. It was a two-hour drive from where the production company was set up in Kingston. Robb was working on the shooting schedule with Tommy Alamosa, the first assistant director. Tommy had been working in film since the sixties and didn’t need Robb’s assistance, but Sam was hoping some of Tommy’s quiet confidence would rub off on Robb, who was a little freaked out about the directing gig. Sam didn’t want him with her anyway. She suspected that the meeting she was heading for would require some finesse and Robb wasn’t good in those situations.

  Levi had been pushing her to pursue the casino money and he’d fully expected to come along, but Sam had told him she’d rather go it alone, sending him off on a location scout instead. Levi couldn’t help flexing, in the physical and every other sense. He had a habit of turning even the most cordial of meetings into a pissing contest and she couldn’t see how that might be beneficial today.

  She did a MapQuest for Running Dog Casino on her iPad before leaving the hotel, but it turned out to be unnecessary. Once she was within thirty miles of the place, there were signs everywhere—loud and large, announcing the location, as well as the amenities offered. The upcoming shows were also advertised on towering roadside neon signs. Kenny Rogers was coming next week, and Jessica Simpson the week after that.

  Marvin Nightingale had set up the meeting and agreed to meet Sam at the hotel beforehand. Sam had no expectations of the place but even if she had, they would have been dashed by what she found. Running Dog was a nouveau Shangri-la rising out of the Catskills like some garish mythical creature emerging from the forest. First there was the gaming house itself—a five-story chunk of limestone, steel, and glass set on the edge of a vast ravine
, the slopes of which were covered with spindly birch trees amid stands of hardwood. A quarter mile away was the Red Hawk Hotel; she guessed it was twenty-five or thirty stories high, and between the two there were countless other venues—fitness centers, tennis courts, soccer fields, baseball diamonds, and a riding stable. And these were just the things Sam could identify from her vantage point in the moving car, on the sloping road leading up toward the hotel.

  After pulling into the parking lot, which must have covered thirty or forty acres, she shut the engine down and got out for a better look. The place was impressive, suggesting a lot of things, not all good—depending on one’s viewpoint, and their opinion of large-scale gambling in general. Sam really didn’t care one way or the other about the sociological implications of the place. To her it smacked of the only thing she was interested in today, the only thing that would persuade her to make the drive in the first place.

  Money.

  She was wearing a long skirt she’d bought in New Mexico, and an off-the-shoulder blouse her sister had brought home from Argentina. The blouse was low-cut and she wasn’t wearing a bra. She had good boobs and there were times when she wasn’t above letting them do a little work for her, particularly when it came to financing. She reached into the car for the battered straw cowboy hat she’d picked up at South by Southwest a few years ago when she was shooting a video for a rockabilly band from Vermont.

  Marvin was waiting for her in the hotel lobby, sitting in a plush velour armchair and reading USA Today. He wore a suit of some synthetic material, sky blue in color, with a red shirt beneath. No tie. Sam gave him a hug that he quite clearly was not expecting.

  “You look good,” Marvin told her.

  “The hat’s okay?” Sam asked.

  “Oh yeah,” Marvin said. “Indians love cowboy hats. One of the great paradoxes of our people, given the history of it all.”

  Sam smiled. “Where do we find Mr. Red Hawk?”

  “The penthouse, of course.”

  They rode up in the elevator together while Marvin provided her with some background to the place. The casino was located on a tiny reservation, population less than two hundred, belonging to the Sumac tribe, an offshoot of the Mahicans, who were situated in the Albany area before moving to Massachusetts in the mid-1800s. The Sumacs stayed behind at that time and hadn’t fared particularly well. Twenty years earlier, the reservation had been a pretty bleak place, according to Marvin—no jobs, no industry, myriad problems concerning alcohol and illegal pharmaceuticals. Then came the casino license and the subsequent turnaround. It had been quick and lucrative, a familiar story of success and unimaginable wealth. Some members of the tribe had handled it well and some hadn’t. Marvin didn’t elaborate on either; apparently he felt he didn’t need to. He did say, as the elevator made a smooth stop at the top floor, that the success of Running Dog lay solely at the feet of Ronnie Red Hawk.