The Love-Haight Case Files

by Jean Rabe, Donald J. Bingle

  “Plan?” said Thomas.

  “Yeah, plan. You want to break up a dog-fighting ring. I’m good to go. What do you know? Where are we going? What are we expecting to find?”

  Thomas fidgeted with the edge of his suit. “Uh … we, we don’t know any of that. We were kind of hoping you might know something about the dog-fighting ring. Supposedly, there are floating fights at various locations in Chinatown and the Tenderloin district.”

  Dagger scowled. “If I knew anything about a dog-fighting ring in the city, there wouldn’t be a dog-fighting ring in the city.”

  Evelyn interjected. “But you spend so much time in the Tenderloin and—”

  Dagger finished her thought “—and other seedy areas of town.”

  Evelyn felt blood rush to her face. “Well, something like that.”

  Dagger sniffed. “Big area. Lots of secrets. The only way I survive there is by not asking about ones I’m not paid to learn about.” He turned toward Thomas. “So, no plan?”

  Thomas tilted his head to one side. “Well, I thought maybe that maybe you and I could just go to the Tenderloin and I’d … well, I’d just go completely invisible and pass through the buildings, you know, being incorporeal and all, ’til I saw something. Then I’d let you know what I found and we’d … well, we’d play it by ear from there.”

  The look Dagger gave Thomas made Evelyn sure she knew how the detective had gotten his name. “What kind of grab-ass plan is that?”

  Thomas blanched, whether it was because his ghostly blood drained from his ghostly face or because he tended to become more transparent generally when under stress, Evelyn wasn’t sure.

  “I admit,” Thomas replied, “it may be a bit tedious.”

  “Tedious?” growled Dagger. “You whiz through buildings while I sit in a car waiting around for you to cry ‘Mommy,’ then we just punt the ball upfield? Is that what you’re saying?”

  Thomas didn’t answer. He simply stood … or floated … looking down at his feet.

  Dagger shook his head. “It’s not just tedious and inefficient—you don’t even know if the bad guys are in town between fights, and you don’t know when the fights are going to occur—it’s a violation of privacy. There’s lots of secrets in the Tenderloin and Chinatown, but most of ’em aren’t criminal. They’re just people being private. But you’re just going to float through everybody’s business while they’re taking a shower or picking their nose or yelling at their kids or doing their taxes or making out on the couch, but that’s no nevermind to you, because you’re a man on a mission and that means you got a right to peep into everyone’s business?”

  “No!” shouted Thomas. Evelyn felt a wave of air pressure bump past her as Thomas shouted. “No. I don’t … I mean, I wouldn’t do anything like that. I’m not a peeper.” He looked over at Evelyn. “Never, I swear.” He turned back to Dagger. “I guess I expected you to be able to identify a specific target … a commercial location, maybe a warehouse. And when you couldn’t, ’cause you didn’t know, I just didn’t think it through.”

  Pete stopped inspecting Dagger’s discarded can and looked up suddenly.

  “Dog barks.”

  “What?” said the rest of the trio in unwitting simultaneity.

  “Dog barks,” repeated Pete. “The average barking dog in an urban area can be heard by two hundred and fifty people.”

  “It can?” said Evelyn.

  Thomas scrunched up his face and looked to one side, like he always did when calculating numbers. “It makes sense. San Francisco has a pretty high population density. Especially with an open window, the sound could easily carry to that many people, maybe more.”

  “How did you know that, Pete?” asked Evelyn.

  Pete tossed Dagger’s can into the narrow space between buildings. “Somebody mentioned it on World of Warcraft when they were pricing guard dogs for the camp. Games can be very educational. I’ve learned a bunch of new ways to kill pigeons by playing.”

  Evelyn let Pete’s last remark slide. “San Francisco Animal Control or the police or somebody must keep records of noise complaints.”

  “Yes,” said Thomas, “but there’s bound to be some habitual complainers who will skew the results.”

  “But,” Evelyn continued, “if we look for spikes that differ from the historical patterns, we should be able to narrow it down.”

  Thomas nodded and Evelyn noticed that a smile was beginning to return to his face. “I’ll check with Patrolman Lane when he does his final rounds in an hour and see if he can get us any data from the police blotter.”

  “And I’ll,” chimed in Evelyn, “contact Animal Control and see if I can get any information from them.” Things were finally looking up.

  Even Pete got in the spirit. “I’ll commune with my brothers across town and see if they’ve noticed anything.” Gargoyles on the various buildings around town could communicate through low frequency vibrations in the buildings they protected, down through the bedrock beneath the city, though Pete had once told Evelyn that low-level quakes sometimes gave the conversation a kind of Tourette’s syndrome quality. Pete continued, “I can’t promise anything, though. I gotta admit they talk a lot more about pigeons than dogs. I mean, us gargoyles don’t usually have to worry about dog poop.”

  Dagger grabbed the last can of Oskar Blues. “And I’ll have another beer. Now, that’s a plan.” He looked around at the group. “Compare notes tomorrow afternoon?”

  Everyone murmured agreement as Dagger got ready to “shoot” his beer.

  Pete looked over the edge of the building. “Drink fast, Dagger. Gretchen just got off the bus with a boatload of office supplies, and somebody needs to help her get ’em inside.”

  Evelyn saw the shining edge of Thomas’ smile dim. She knew he wished he could help carry things and was frustrated he couldn’t. But he was helping Gretchen and Sadie … and her … more than he knew. She had to make sure he understood that.

  Chapter 4.6

  The fey winked and giggled at each other as they danced around the tall pole in the center of the clearing. Each of the participants, who were festooned with flowers as circlets on their heads and braided into belts for their gaily-colored skirts and pantaloons, held a long ribbon attached to the pole. As they danced around the pole, half clockwise, half counter, the fey darted first in and then out in passing, causing the ribbon winding round the pole to braid in a bright, intricate pattern.

  Truth be told, Pete found the celebration a bit silly, even embarrassing to watch, but it wasn’t the main focus of his attention. He shifted his point of view frequently, looking outward from the edge of the maypole circle to the dark shadows and tree cover beyond. He saw a flicker of black against the dark cover as evening fell, then heard the full-throated war cry of the wood banshees as they rushed in to suck the life from the frolicsome fey.

  After remaining almost stock still for so long, it felt good to move again. Gretchen’s office chair bumped with a heavy thud against her desk as Pete twisted and turned the controller, maneuvering his World of Warcraft character to do battle against the forces of evil in the make-believe realm. His character spun and danced with a lithe flexibility and lethal grace his own stone form would never know. This was so much more fun that killing pigeons!

  His skill was such that the bloody battle was over almost before it began. But it had barely ended when a dark shadow fell over the entire scene.

  “Sign off, big guy, or I’ll do a hard reboot and you’ll lose this session’s accumulated experience points.” Gretchen hovered over him. When he looked back and to his right to see her, he noted her eyes were narrowed and the tip of her cane was only a few inches from the on-off switch for the surge protector into which his … okay, her … desktop computer was plugged.

  “I’m on break,” Pete rumbled as his stubby fingers pushed and maneuvered the buttons of the controller, saving his character’s progress and powering down the combat-heavy fantasy MMORPG. “Workers get a fifteen minute
break in the middle of every four-hour period, and a mandatory paid lunch break for any shift of seven hours or more. It’s the law. I saw it when I was turning pages for Thomas.”

  “Hmmph,” growled Gretchen as Pete jumped out of the chair with a thud that reverberated across the office. “I’ll bet those books don’t say anything about using your co-worker’s equipment or scratching up her desktop with your elbows while you play games.”

  Pete felt the green granite veins in his stony countenance darken from embarrassment. His rough composition was hard on wood, even wood as tough as oak. “Er, sorry, Gretchen.” He moved to feel the rough surface of the desk with his stony fingers so he could tell how bad the damage was, but stopped short. The effort would only make the scratches worse. “I’ll see if Z-man … you, know, Zaxil, our landlord … has any furniture polish in the janitor’s closet.”

  Gretchen’s scowl softened. “You do that, Pete. Then join us on the roof. Dagger’s on his way over, and I know Evey’s been talking to Animal Control on and off all day. Time for everyone to report in, including you.”

  O O O

  Thomas gazed westward, past the uneven jumble of buildings of the city’s many neighborhoods, toward the distant ocean. At least he had his sight. Even as a ghost, he could still enjoy the sunlight glinting off the choppy surface of the fierce blue of the Pacific Ocean. Even as a ghost, however, he was careful not to stare too long toward the bright light of sunshine on the waves. He didn’t know if ghosts could go blind by looking too long at the sun, but he wasn’t about to risk any damage to his eyesight. Without it, he would truly be a lost soul, wandering around San Francisco in perpetual dark, unable to tell where he was, unable to practice his profession even in the limited fashion he still could now, unable to see Evelyn or the beauty of nature … unable to see any point for continuing on.

  He took a deep breath, though he could not feel himself do so, gathered his thoughts, and then turned to face the rest of the rooftop assemblage: Dagger, Gretchen, Evelyn, and Pete, who was rubbing his hands as if trying to get some residue off them, producing an irritating scritch of stone against stone.

  “Uh, could you stop that, Pete?”

  The green granite gargoyle scowled in Gretchen’s direction from behind her back. “I smell lemony fresh. It’s not good for my reputation to smell lemony fresh.”

  Dagger interrupted. “Can we get to it?”

  “Sure.” Thomas nodded toward Gretchen, and she held a clipboard up so that he could read from the top page. “I talked to Patrolman Lane. He had a bit of a hard time getting anyone to take his inquiries about noise complaints about barking dogs seriously, but he was able to confirm that each of the locations in the Tenderloin and Chinatown the police later discovered had been floating arenas for dog fights had an elevated level of complaints for the thirty-six hours proceeding the event.” He looked up at the group. “That means our theory for locating the fights is sound, but that we won’t get much lead time.”

  Dagger frowned. “So when and where do the noise complaints indicate the next fight will be?”

  “Phillip doesn’t have a clue. He was only able to find a correlation looking at noise complaints for past sites. The police just turn such complaints over to Animal Control, unless there’s a suggestion of some kind of foul play associated with the complaint. You know, like a missing person or broken door or something suggesting the noise complaint may be due to a deceased owner or some such.”

  Evelyn chimed in, her voice bright and cheery. “Fortunately for us, and for Sadie and Barney, the people at Animal Control pay a lot more attention to animals in distress than to people in distress. Since they have trucks going about the city to handle grim situations like cat-hoarding old ladies and escaped exotics which deranged people try to keep as pets, they have the trucks patrol for strays between such calls. They track noise complaints as a way to suggest the most useful patrol routes. I asked them to compile dog-barking stats this morning. And once Thomas gave me Phillip’s information about past spikes, I confirmed his info with them as a way of focusing their analysis.”

  Dagger growled again. “Getting to the point would be good.”

  Thomas could tell that Dagger’s impatience irritated Evelyn, but someone who did not know her as well as he did likely would not notice the micro-movement of her lips pursing before she continued. She was an attorney, a professional. To practice law, one had to control one’s demeanor, whether in front of an irksome judge, a clueless jury, or an irritating client or colleague.

  “There are two potential hits. One in Chinatown, within a block or two of the intersection of Jones and Filbert. The other one is, as suspected, in the Tenderloin, near some warehouses along Polk, between Ellis and Eddy or somewhere thereabouts. The time frame suggests that tonight’s the night something is going to happen.”

  Thomas tried to picture the neighborhoods in his head, wishing he could conjure up GoogleEarth StreetView in his mind. “That’s not very specific. It’ll be a lot of ground to cover, especially for two locations miles apart.”

  “Might not be necessary,” responded Dagger. He looked into the distance as if he was remote-viewing both spots. “If I recall correctly, that’s a pretty dense part of Chinatown. Lots of small buildings. Restaurants, shops, small apartment buildings. Not sure there’s anything the right size and remote enough from a lot of hustle and bustle to hold a dog fight.” Dagger stopped looking into the distance and faced Thomas directly. “I say we go with the odds. Tenderloin.”

  Behind them all, Pete grumbled to life. “I agree, not that anybody’s asked me about what I found out.”

  Evelyn looked hurt, as she turned to Pete. “We’re sorry, Pete. It’s just that you said that you weren’t expecting to find out much from the gargoyle clan. Do you have information on a specific location?”

  Pete used a talon on his right foot to scratch at a pigeon dropping on the roof, as if attempting to smudge it out. “Well, no,” he admitted. “But I agree that Chinatown is less likely.” The gargoyle looked up at the group. “Not too many of my brethren are near either location, but they did suggest that sounds of animals in distress in Chinatown seem to peak on a semi-regular basis. You know, cyclical.”

  “Cyclical?” asked Gretchen. “Like with the economy?”

  Pete shook his carved stone head. “More like with the lunar calendar.”

  “Werewolves?” asked Evelyn with a shudder. Thomas and Evelyn dealt with a lot of OTs in the brief existence of the law firm, but so far they had not had any lycanthropes as clients. Thomas knew that Evelyn wasn’t prejudiced against the pitiable beasts, probably just a bit scared. A lycanthrope in full fang could be a frightful sight, he was sure. Fortunately, that was only an issue during the days surrounding a full moon as best as he understood it.

  Dagger laughed heartily. “I doubt that. A lycanthrope loping through the narrow streets of Chinatown would be pretty obvious. No doubt they prefer public parks and open expanses. It’s something else altogether.”

  “Like what?” asked Gretchen, looking back and forth at Dagger and Pete, as if they were sharing an inside joke and not letting the rest of the group in on it.

  Pete stood stone-faced.

  Finally, Dagger spoke again. “The whole Chinese culture is lunar-calendar based, including the holidays. So the big feasts and festivals and party times, they all are timed to the lunar calendar. Lots of business for the restaurants.”

  Evelyn interjected. “But Chinese New Year is already past.”

  Dagger shrugged. “Plenty of holidays on the calendar. Azure Dragon is coming up.”

  Evelyn shook her head. “Okay, so there are holidays I don’t have on my calendar. I still don’t get it. What do Chinese holidays have to do with dogs and cats?”

  The realization spread across Thomas’ mind like the sunset would soon spread across the waves beneath the western sky. “Well, you know,” he said, searching for the right words to convey what he had concluded without shocking her. “T
imes are tough, economically, and with lots of customers wanting to feast and, uh, the prices for traditional …” He faltered, unable to continue, to impinge further upon her innocence.

  Dagger took up the narrative. “Some of the cheaper, more traditional restaurants, they serve … they serve cat and dog.”

  “Oh my God!” whispered Evelyn, her right hand flying to cover her mouth.

  “Gross,” muttered Gretchen. “Not that I don’t sometime suspect they do that at The Towers. The mystery meat in the cafeteria is sometimes pretty stringy.”

  Evelyn stared at Dagger, wide-eyed. “And people order it?”

  Dagger shrugged. “Sometimes they say its beef or chicken or rabbit. But the old places, where the dishes listed aren’t in English, they might put it on the menu.” He gestured with his large hands palms up. “In some places it’s considered a delicacy. What do you think happened to all the dogs during the Cultural Revolution?”

  Gretchen winced. “That’s probably one of the reasons there were so few Chinese Shar-Peis left in China when an effort was made back in the seventies to save the breed by bringing some of them to the States.”

  “I may be sick,” Evelyn said with a tremble.

  “Well, if you are, don’t make your deposit over that side,” said Pete, pointing a pudgy finger toward the roof edge nearest Evelyn. “Sad Sadie’s box is right below and I don’t think those broken umbrellas can take a load.” He gestured with his head toward the middle of the side behind him. “But there’s a pigeon nest over here that could use a bit of biological warfare.”

  Gretchen barked out a raspy laugh and Thomas couldn’t help but smile at the stone-faced practicality of his gargoyle friend. Pete had broken the grim mood of their discussion with a joke.

  The queasy look on Evelyn’s face diminished and Dagger took the group back to the mechanics of the task at hand.

  “They won’t start ’til well after dark,” the private detective stated, all business once again. He looked at Thomas. “I’ll meet you somewhere on Polk, around Ellis or Eddy—just look for my car—at ten tonight. I hope you’ve got Officer Lane’s phone number memorized. We might need to call for support and 911 calls from the Tenderloin don’t always get quick response, if you know what I mean.”