“So perhaps now you will deign to tell me about it,” I suggest.
“Tell you about what?” he asks, suddenly scratching his left shoulder.
“About you and Devil Moon.”
He leans down and scratches his thigh. “Damned fleas!” he mutters.
“So how long have you been a wolf?” I ask.
“Ever since I start noticing girls,” he says, trying to smile, and I see more gray hair stuck between his teeth.
“Why don’t you just admit that you are a werewolf?” I say.
“Do I look like a werewolf?” he scoffs.
“Yes,” I say.
“Oh,” he says unhappily. “I was hoping it wouldn’t show.”
“I wonder just how many rules, regulations, and laws you have broken tonight, Tabasco,” I say. “You have destroyed track property. You have killed five competitors. You have chased a valuable greyhound off of the premises. You have impersonated a greyhound yourself…”
“I do not impersonate a greyhound!” he says heatedly. “It is not my fault that the track steward took my entry fee. I never claimed to be a greyhound.”
“All right,” I say. “I will amend impersonating a greyhound to impersonating a wolf.”
“I didn’t impersonate a wolf,” he replies adamantly. “I am a wolf.”
“Okay, then,” I say. “You have impersonated a human…”
“I’m a human, too!” he insists.
“The court is going to have a difficult time with this one,” I predict. “They will not know whether to put you in jail or the dog pound.”
“Have you any suggestions?” he says.
“Yes,” I tell him. “I suggest you redeem your marker and pay me the five large before I decide to testify against you.”
“But I won the race!” he says.
“Do you think the track lets the result stand once I tell them what you are?” I ask.
“Would you do that?” he says.
“Absolutely, if you don’t redeem your marker,” I say. “I booked a bet on a greyhound. You were at best a brownhound.”
“I thought we were friends,” says Tabasco.
“I am very fond of you,” I assure him. “It is just that I am even fonder of the five large you owe me.”
“We have a problem here, Harry,” he says. “I am ashamed to admit it, because I always pay my debts, but I am tapped out. I prowl all night, which is not even a minimum-wage job, and it tires me out so much that I fall asleep at my desk during the day so often that I am given my walking papers three weeks ago. This is why I came up with the dog track idea. I am desperate for money. You would be surprised at how little a wolf can earn between midnight and six in the morning.”
“If this is the case,” I say, “why did you choose to become a werewolf?”
“It is not a matter of choice,” says Tabasco. “I fall in love with this beautiful Gypsy woman named Yolanda Schwartz…”
“Yolanda Schwartz?” I say.
“Well, she is half Gypsy,” he replies. “And for some unknown reason her father disapproves of me.”
“Unknown,” I say.
“Well, it was unknown at the time,” answers Tabasco. “Only later do I find out that it is his Cadillac that I steal and sell to Straight Deal Sheldon’s chop shop.”
“I can see where this might cause him to view the situation with some concern,” I agree.
“And a modicum of fury,” adds Gently Gently.
“He winds up and hits me with his high hard one-a Gypsy curse,” says Tabasco. “And from that day to this, I have had a secret identity, just like Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne, the difference being that Clark Kent is gainfully employed and Bruce Wayne is independently wealthy, and what is more, they climb into their costumes while I grow into mine.”
Benny Fifth Street walks in just then.
“Hi, Tabasco,” he says. “Nice race, all things considered.”
Tabasco buries his head in his hands and starts crying. This causes him to choke, and he spits out still more gray hair.
“You’ve got to help me, Harry!” he says desperately. “This curse is ruining my life. I only enter the race to raise enough money to have the curse removed so I can get back together with Yolanda.” A tear runs down his face. “She still loves me, but it is a very smart curse.”
“Smart in what way?” asks Benny.
“She’s allergic to dogs!” he wails, crying and coughing up hair again.
“Boy, that’s some Gypsy curse,” agrees Gently Gently.
“Have you talked to Big-Hearted Milton or Morris the Mage?” I suggest. “They are masterful if mendacious magicians. Possibly they can remove the curse.”
“Possibly they can,” echoes Tabasco. “But they will not do it for free, and I have already explained my plight to you.”
“Well,” I say, “it appears we must help you find a way to make a living, if only so you can pay off my five large and have enough left over to speak to Milton or Morris.” I think of all the things I see dogs do in the movies. “Can you save a dying man in a blizzard?” I ask.
“I cannot even find a dying man in a blizzard,” says Tabasco, “and besides, when I am busy being a wolf, I tip the scales at no more than ninety pounds. Can you imagine me pulling Gently Gently to safety?”
“I cannot imagine you pulling him across the room unless you know how to operate a crane,” says Benny.
“Is there a market for Seeing Eye dogs?” I ask.
“I am nearsighted and I have astigmatism,” says Tabasco unhappily.
“I have never noticed you wearing glasses,” I say.
“I do not wish to spoil my manly good looks, especially once I meet Yolanda,” he says.
I am about to tell him that he is in no danger of that, that his manly good looks have gone the way of the dodo and the five-cent beer, but instead I concentrate on the problem at hand. “What else can you do besides eat greyhounds?” I ask.
Tabasco frowns. “Give me a for-instance,” he says.
I shrug. “Do you herd sheep?” I say.
“That is wrong,” says Gently Gently.
“How can a question be wrong?” says Benny. “It is answers that are wrong.”
“Do you herd sheep is wrong,” insists Gently Gently. “Have you heard sheep is right.”
“Get him some calories,” I say to Benny. “The crossword puzzle has sapped his mental strength, and he is now operating on two cylinders, three at the most.”
Benny leads Gently Gently off to the bar for nuts and pretzels, and I go back to considering Tabasco ’s problem, except Tabasco isn’t there anymore. I look down and there is Devil Moon, panting and drooling and looking mournfully into my eyes. Mournfully, and maybe a little hungrily, too.
“ Tabasco, do you still understand me?” I say.
Tabasco stares at me and yawns. He has very white teeth.
“ Tabasco, howl once if you understand me and twice if you don’t.”
Tabasco walks over to a nearby chair and lifts his leg on it.
“I like him better as a guy,” says Gently Gently, staring at Tabasco from the bar.
“Hell,” adds Benny, “I even like him better as a greyhound.”
“You know,” says Joey Chicago, “other guys decorate their places with the stuffed heads of lions and tigers and mooses and things like that, but me, I am too gentle and too sensitive to ever show off the remains of an animal in my establishment.” He raises his voice. “But if somebody lifts his leg in here again, we’re going to display a mounted wolf’s head over the bar.” He turns to Benny and Gently Gently. “And that goes for you, too!”
All the while this is going on, I am staring at Tabasco and trying to think of how to put his transformation to economic gain. For a while I think of the movies, but even though Rin Tin Tin has gone on to his reward, I can foresee numerous problems, because out there time is money, and once they get all the actors and cameras in position and yell, “Action!” it would not do for
the new Rin Tin Tin to appear as the old Tabasco Sanchez.
I know that guard dogs are always in demand, but I also know Tabasco Sanchez, and whether he is busy being a man or a wolf, I would not want to put him near anything that was worth guarding.
I am beginning to think that maybe he has got a handle on the situation, that there is no way for a wolf to make a decent living working the third shift, especially in Manhattan, when a newspaper delivery truck drives by, and plastered all over it are ads for the forthcoming Southminster dog show, and suddenly I see a way for Tabasco to pay off his debt to me.
“ Tabasco,” I say, “if you can understand me, I think I have the solution to your problem. I do not know quite how you can answer me. Clearly you do not howl on cue, and telling you to lift your leg once or twice will clearly put you in dutch with Joey Chicago. Maybe you could paw the ground once if you understand me and twice if you don’t?”
Tabasco stares at me and remains motionless.
“Is that a yes or a no?” asks Benny.
“Maybe you should make it multiple choice,” suggests Gently Gently.
“ Tabasco,” says Joey Chicago, “if you will stop being a wolf for the next ten minutes, you can have an Old Peculiar on the house.”
“I call that damned sporting of you,” says Tabasco, who is a man again so fast that I do not even see him change.
“How do you do that?” asks Benny.
“And how come your clothes vanish when you are a wolf and come back when you are a man?” asks Gently Gently.
“You will have to ask Big-Hearted Milton or Soothsayer Solly,” replies Tabasco. “I do not seem to have any control over it-or over anything else, for that matter.”
“Do you remember what I say to you while you are being Kazan of the North?” I ask as he downs his Old Peculiar.
“Yes, and I am very grateful.”
“Then why did you not respond?” I say.
“When I am a wolf, I think wolfish thoughts, and I am concerned with wolfish things. I hear you say that you have solved my problem, but as a wolf I am much more interested if you had tell me where all the rabbits or the lady wolves were hiding.” He pauses for a moment, then continues: “But I am interested now.”
“I see that the Southminster dog show is coming up, and that first prize is six large, which means five for me and one for you. All we have to do is win it.”
“Win against the best-bred, best-conditioned dogs in the world?” says Tabasco doubtfully. “I haven’t got a chance.”
“Where would America be if Alexander Hamilton had had that attitude?” says Gently Gently reproachfully.
“Pretty much where it is today,” answered Tabasco. “And so, come to think of it, is Alexander Hamilton.”
“I don’t know, Harry,” says Benny. “I know what he did in an eight-dog field, but Southminster has thousands of dogs. How many can he kill and eat before someone gets wise?”
“Or before he gets full?” says Gently Gently.
“ Tabasco,” I say, “are you willing to try, or do I pass the word that you will not make good your marker?”
“I will try,” he says. “I cannot have you spreading it all over town that I am a deadbeat.”
“Or that he is only occasionally a human being,” adds Gently Gently.
So the next morning I buy a leash and collar, making a note to add it to what Tabasco owes me, and then I go to the Madison Square Garden, where they are holding this canine beauty contest that night, and ask to see the condition book, figuring I will enter Tabasco in a field for nonwinners of two, and they explain to me that this does not work like Belmont or Aqueduct, and I have to enter him in the proper breed, so I request the entry form for timberwolves, and they laugh and ask me what I really want.
“I do not much care,” I reply, “so long as he competes after dark.”
“That is a most unusual request,” says the steward.
“He burns easily,” I say.
“Here is a list of the breeds that will show at night,” says the steward, handing me a sheet of paper. “Is he on it?”
I look, and I do not see timberwolf or even werewolf listed, but one of the breeds is greyhound, and I figure, well, he has won a race as a greyhound so he might as well remain consistent and win Southminster as a greyhound.
I go back to Joey Chicago’s and kill some time there before we are due in the ring, and then, about an hour before post time-at Southminster they call it ring time-Benny and Gently Gently and Tabasco and I all go over to the Garden.
It is a very unusual sport, this dog-show game, because they do not even have a tote board on the infield, and in fact they do not have an infield at all. There are dogs everywhere, and Benny hunts up the ring we are to appear in, and I turn to Tabasco.
“It is time to turn into a wolf again,” I say, “and it would not hurt things a bit if this particular wolf happens to look just like a greyhound.”
He closes his eyes and grunts.
“I am trying,” he says. “But nothing is happening.”
“Try harder,” I tell him.
He tenses and grunts again, but when he opens his eyes he is still Tabasco Sanchez.
“This is most embarrassing,” he says.
“I do not wish to be the bearer of bad tidings,” says Benny, “but you are due in the ring in three minutes.”
“I am sorry, Harry,” says Tabasco. “It does not seem to be working tonight.”
“I pay a twenty-five-dollar entry fee,” I tell him, “and I am going to get my money’s worth.” I put the collar around his neck and attach it to the leash. “Let us go.”
“This is humiliating!” he says as I start dragging him toward the ring.
“Give me my five large and I will cease and desist this instant,” I say.
He does not reply, and I look back at him, and he has become a wolf again.
We enter the ring with six sleek greyhounds. Tabasco looks at them and growls. It is a loud, ominous, hungry growl. Two of the greyhounds begin dragging their owners to the far side of the ring, three start shaking, and one just lays right where he has fainted.
The judge comes over and stares at Tabasco.
“I believe you are in the wrong ring, sir,” he says at last.
“I am in the right ring,” I answer.
“This is not a greyhound,” he says.
“He is from the Mexican branch of the family,” I say.
“He is not a greyhound,” repeats the judge. “I am going to have to disqualify him.”
“He is a greyhound,” I insist. “He has just been out in the sun too long, and has acquired a tan.”
“Get out of my ring!” says the judge, pointing to the exit.
For a minute I think Tabasco is going to bite the judge’s finger off, but I jerk on the leash, and suddenly all the fight goes out of him as he realizes that we have failed and he still is penniless, and he docilely follows me out of the ring.
We are on our way to the exit when we pass a ring where they are judging these little silken-haired dogs, and suddenly Tabasco stops and digs in his heels, which is a lot of heels to dig in all at once, and I can tell he is taken with one feminine little dog.
I ask a ringsider what this kind of dog is called, and he says, “Shih tzu,” and I say, “Gesundheit!” and he says, “No, that is the name of the breed.”
I pull on Tabasco’s leash again, and he pulls back, and before long most of the ringsiders are no longer watching the Gesundheit dogs but are laying bets on who will win our tug-of-war, and at the moment Tabasco is a seven-to-five favorite, and then suddenly there is a cheer, and Tabasco and I both stop pulling for a minute to see what the cheering is about, and it seems that the little dog he has been watching has won.
On the way out of the ring she makes a beeline for Tabasco, and then they touch noses, and then she is led away and I start to walk to the exit again, and Tabasco bites his leash in half and runs to the big ring in the center of the building, and I hav
e no choice but to follow him since he is five thousand dollars on the hoof, or on the claw as the case may be, and I am not letting him out of my sight until I collect.
I am not sure what is going on, but dogs keep coming and going into the big ring, and finally there is an enormous cheer, and all that is left in the ring is the little Gesundheit dog and thirty-seven photographers. Finally the crowd starts dispersing, and as it thins out I spot Tabasco on the far side of the ring, and I race around it to reach him before he can run off, and when I get there he has forgotten to be a wolf and is just plain old Tabasco Sanchez again, still attached to a leash and collar.
“What are you trying to pull?” I demand.
“Just wait, and all will be revealed,” he says.
A minute later Benny catches up with us, and I can see all 350 pounds of Gently Gently rounding the far turn and heading for home, and then suddenly we are joined by as pretty a dark-haired girl as I have ever seen. She walks right up to Tabasco and plants a kiss on his cheek.
“Harry the Book,” he says, “I want you to meet the woman I intend to marry, Yolanda Schwartz.”
“You must have just arrived,” I say, “because surely I would have noticed someone of your good looks before.”
“You have been looking at her for the past hour,” says Tabasco.
“You are mistaken,” I say. “I would not forget someone like her.”
“She just went Best in Show,” says Tabasco. “I recognize her the second I see her, for even a change in species cannot disguise the love of my life from me.”
I stare at her, and there is not a touch of Gesundheit dog to be seen, except maybe for the silken hair.
“It is true,” says Yolanda. “I am so mad at my father for what he does to poor Tabasco that I run away from home, so he curses me, too.” She holds up a fistful of money. “It turns out to be a blessing, because now Tabasco and I can be together forever, and he can pay off the five thousand dollars he owes you.”
“No,” says Tabasco. “We need that money to set up housekeeping.”
“Think, Tabasco,” says Yolanda. “If we take our human forms, Daddy will just find us and break us up again. But if we stay a Shi Tzu and a wolf forever, he will never find us. We will sleep all day and love all night.”
Full MoonCity Page 13
