by Martha Carr
“Huh. What’s this for?”
“He’s not gonna tell us.” Rex stepped into the first bag. “It’s New York. People do weird stuff in New York.”
“Johnny, I don’t get it.”
“Luther,” Johnny snapped and pointed again. “Now.”
“Aw, fine. Jeez. It’s not like—hey. Hey, there’s some kinda cheese in here or something.”
As Luther rooted around in the bag, Johnny bent quickly and pulled the zipper closed up to the hound’s chest, nudging his head out of the way.
“Hey. What’s that for?”
Rex stared with wide eyes and didn’t move an inch as the dwarf zipped him up like his brother. “Not a funny joke, Johnny. I don’t get it.”
“No dogs in the subway unless they’re in a bag.” Johnny stepped between the duffel bags and took hold of the straps before he looked at Lisa. “My dogs are now in bags.”
She responded with a genuine laugh and shook her head. “I honestly expected you to forgo the rules and simply walk them in anyway.”
“Hey, rules are rules. And I don’t break ʼem unless I have to.”
“As long as you don’t break anything else.” She examined the fifty-five-pound coonhound in each bag and raised her eyebrows. “This I’ve gotta see.”
“Huh. You’re one of those.”
“One of what?”
Johnny sniffed and tightened his grasp around the duffel-bag straps. “A doubter.”
Luther stretched his neck over the side of the bag and licked tentatively at the dwarf’s hand. “Oh. The cheese was from your sandwich.”
Lisa tried to wipe a small smile off her face as she leaned forward to peer at the glowing lights of the oncoming train. “I don’t doubt your skills or your ability to do your job and close this case, Johnny, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“It’s not.” And everyone underestimates a dwarf.
“Whatever you say.” She grinned and stepped back as the subway station filled with the rumble and whine of the next train’s approach. This was soon followed by a gust of wind and a grating squeal of brakes on metal. “Ready?”
“Are you?”
The subway doors slid open with a hiss, and a crowd of pedestrians filtered out in a heavy stream, talking or staring at their phones. Most shouldered past each other to get to the stairs.
With a grunt, Johnny bent his legs to slip one strap over each of his shoulders and stood.
Luther uttered a startled yelp as his legs gave way in the duffel bag. “Holy shit.”
“Woah, woah.” Rex lowered his head as far as it would go over the side of the second bag. “Not cool.”
“You’re good, boys. We gotta catch this train.”
Chuckling, Lisa stepped briskly toward the open subway doors. Strangers sidestepped the dwarf in the black leather jacket who carried more than a hundred pounds of coonhound over his shoulders. Most of them didn’t even look up from their smartphones as they streamed past.
“I don’t like this.” Rex finished that with a low whine. “Dogs don’t go in bags.”
“The City says otherwise.” With another grunt of effort, Johnny stepped into the subway and turned to face Lisa, who’d taken a seat and now watched him with an amused smirk.
Luther bucked around in his bag but stopped abruptly and licked his muzzle. “Uh-oh. Johnny, what if I have to take a shit?”
“Don’t even think about it.”
Lisa raised both hands and chuckled. “I didn’t say anything.”
“Good call.” Johnny turned to put his back to the row of seats and caught a middle-aged man in plaster-covered jeans and a sweat-stained t-shirt across the train glaring at him. “What? Have you never seen a dog in a bag?”
The man shifted on the seat and peered into the takeout bag in his lap.
“Hey, Johnny.” Luther didn’t even notice the solid ground beneath him again when the dwarf set both bags on the floor and left one empty seat between him and Lisa when he sat. “Hey. Ask him if he’s gonna eat all those chips.”
“Of course he’s gonna eat them.” Rex sat back on his hind legs and stared at the people filing into the train. “No one shares chips.”
A soft chuckle came from a girl in her early twenties who boarded with two of her friends.
“Oh, my God. Look at that.” She moved her purse to her other shoulder and leaned against the center pole to aim her camera-phone at the scowling dwarf and his zipped-up hounds. Her friends laughed and exchanged surprised looks before they pulled their phones out too.
“So this is what your cousin was talking about.”
“People will do anything to get their dogs on the subway.”
Johnny stared at the opposite side of the train as the doors closed with a hiss. Tourists. Always taking pictures of the wrong thing.
The girls’ phones clicked in quick succession and they leaned together, whispering as they studied him openly and snapped away with their digital cameras.
“Hey.” He leaned forward between his spread knees and pointed at the girl who didn’t immediately stop taking pictures. “One more picture and your phone’s mine.”
“Whatever.” She rolled her eyes and stuck her phone in her purse, but as they started moving and picked up speed, all three of them darted the dwarf constant glances over their shoulders and giggled.
Lisa crossed one ankle over her opposite knee and leaned back in her seat. “You’re starting a fan club, I see.”
Johnny sniffed disdainfully and thumped back against the seat. “They’ll forget all about it when they see the Met and the Highline.”
“And you don’t like your picture taken?”
“I like to keep things simple.”
“Right.”
They got off the subway at the 81st Street station and set off toward the Museum of Natural History. Johnny pulled his sunglasses out of the inside pocket of his leather jacket and put them on. One duffel bag stuffed into the other and strapped sideways across his chest thumped against his back with every step. Rex and Luther fell obediently into line at his side, their noses pressed to the sidewalk as they zig-zagged enthusiastically to pick up the smells of the city.
Luther’s tail wagged furiously. “It’s like everything I never knew I wanted all in one place.”
“What is that?” Rex asked
“It’s a bratwurst stand,” the dwarf said without thinking. “They sell brats.”
“Rex. Rex! Bratwurst stand! Brats! Johnny, can we have one?”
“Two, Johnny.”
He ignored his hounds and continued to move. He glanced briefly at the faces that passed them on the sidewalk. “I assume you know where we’re headed.”
“Washington Heights.” Lisa put her sunglasses on. She’d traded in the black frameless ones for a pair of brown-tinted aviators, which went much better with the civilian jeans and maroon softshell jacket after she’d ditched the federal monkey suit.
“Upper West Side, yeah?”
“You got it.” She turned to look at the dwarf who trudged down the sidewalk, each dog’s rope slack so it scraped along the cement with every step. “How long has it been since you were here?”
“Not long enough.”
She let that one go and took a deep breath of the cooling spring air as the sun started its descent and glinted off the millions of windows and the metal buildings rising all around them. “We’ll ask around there first. One of our informants has a few connections with a smaller band of thugs in Washington Heights. He said these guys have mentioned Boneblade once or twice.”
“Are they in the same business?”
“Only the general crime business.” Lisa smiled at a man and his daughter holding hands as they passed.
The little girl’s eyes widened when she saw the hounds and she pointed. “Daddy. Daddy, look. They’re twins!”
“Uh-huh.” He tugged her along and the little girl looked over her shoulder to wave at the dogs.
Rex paused briefly to look at her
. “We could say hi.”
“I like kids, Johnny.”
“We’re in the city, Johnny. Everyone loves dogs in the city.”
Johnny clicked his tongue and both dogs trotted to catch up with him. “No drugs or trafficking, though?”
“Not at the same level as Boneblade.” Lisa shoved her hands into her jacket pockets. “These are low-level wannabes in comparison but the information’s good. We can’t touch Boneblade but we can at least get to the guys who know where not to go if they wanna stay in business.”
The dwarf nodded. “Right.”
They approached the Museum of Natural History on their right as a stream of a dozen five-year-old kids rushed down the wide front steps, around the central statue, and toward the sidewalk, screaming and laughing. The boy leading the group wore a paper crown and clutched a fistful of balloon strings in his hand. Most of them read, Happy Birthday! and one even had the T-Rex skeleton printed on shiny cellophane.
“Hey, Mister. I like your dogs!” The child stopped short when he reached the sidewalk. “Are they friendly?”
“Mostly.” Johnny frowned at the group of kids laughing and whacking each other with foam swords.
Four adults tried to corral them into some kind of organized group, and one of them reached toward the boy wearing the crown. “Come on, Ricky. We’re heading to Grandma’s after this.”
“Dad, I wanted to pet the dogs.”
“Well, you have to ask first, son.” The man gave Johnny a wide-eyed look, but his features softened when he saw Lisa standing there with the dwarf and smiling. “Sorry. He knows to not run up to people. Especially people with dogs.”
Ricky scuffed his sneaker against the sidewalk. “Sorry. Can I pet your dogs?”
Luther sat and gazed at the kid, his tail sweeping wildly across the concrete. “Come on, Johnny. Look at him. He likes me.”
Rex walked in a slow circle at the end of his rope and sniffed the sidewalk. “They’re kids.”
Johnny exhaled a slow sigh. “Go ahead.”
“Yes! Dad, he said I could.”
“I heard that.” The man looked at the dwarf and nodded. “He’s begged us for a dog since he could talk.”
“And you won’t even say maybe.” Ricky handed his balloons to his dad and stepped toward Luther with his hand outstretched. “What’s his name?”
“Luther. And this one’s Rex.”
“Hey, Luther.” The boy laughed when the hound licked his open hand enthusiastically.
“Yes!” Luther could barely keep his balance in excitement. “Oh, man. I knew I smelled cake. Rex, it’s cake! Want some?”
Rex sat at Johnny’s side and stared at the screaming, laughing children running around the front of the museum. “Now they’re all coming.”
Johnny scowled and rubbed his hand over his chin and mouth as Ricky’s friends swarmed toward them. The hounds will be fine but I can handle only one tiny human at a time.
He opened his mouth to say thanks for petting his dog and now it was time to split, but Lisa beat him to it.
“Birthday party, right?” she said and gave Ricky’s dad a sympathetic smile.
The man chuckled. “What gave it away?”
“It feels like it’s way over the top now, but trust me. He’ll remember this for a long time. Good memories can be hard to come by.”
“Tell me about it.”
The dwarf glanced at the federal agent playing compassionate stranger at a birthday party and frowned. No way is she old enough to have kids. I call daddy issues on this one.
“Hey, mister!” The gaggle of five-year-olds finally approached and the other three exhausted parents trailed closely behind them with watchful gazes. “Can we pet your dogs?”
“Go right ahead,” Lisa said before the dwarf could reply. “This one’s Rex and that one with the birthday boy is Luther.”
Johnny tried to smile but rolled his eyes, although no one could see it behind his black sunglasses. “Don’t make any quick movements or loud noises. Got it?”
Rex looked at him and panted. “We move fast and make loud noises all the time. What’s wrong with you?”
He ignored the dog and scowled at the front steps of the Museum of Natural History.
The kids swarmed around the hounds, Lisa and Ricky’s dad kept talking about birthday parties and young children, and the dwarf fought the urge to drop both ropes and keep moving down the sidewalk on his own until Rex and Luther followed him of their own volition.
Too many kids, man. Like this is normal.
The only thing that stopped him from taking a hike right then and there was Ricky’s voice a few feet away.
“You’re a good dog, Luther.”
Luther’s tail wagged fiercely as he lowered his head to sniff the kid’s shoes. “You got any more cake, kid? That frosting was legit. What kind was it?”
“We had a chocolate cake with strawberry frosting for my birthday,” the boy said. “You can probably taste it. It’s my favorite. I wanted to save some but my dad said we had to let everyone have a piece.”
“I didn’t have a piece. Come on, kid. You gotta have leftovers somewhere. What about your pockets?” Luther shoved his snout against Ricky’s pants pockets, and the boy laughed.
“I don’t think dogs can eat chocolate anyway. It’ll make you sick.”
“Man, that smells good. Ooh, yeah. Yeah, right there.” Luther leaned against the boy’s thigh and his rear leg lifted and pumped at nothing but air as Ricky scratched him in what appeared to be the perfect place. “Hey, Johnny. Ask the big one if there’s any cake left.”
“We’ll let you get back to whatever you were doing,” the dwarf said gruffly and nodded at the kid’s dad. Without waiting for a response, he whistled and tugged briefly on both slack ropes in his hands. “Rex. Luther. Come on.”
“All right, kids,” one of the chaperoning moms called. “Let’s let the nice…man and his dogs get back to their day.” She corralled the kids getting their final pets in with Rex and gave Lisa a grateful smile but didn’t look at Johnny.
“Have a good one,” the agent said. “And happy birthday, kid.”
“Bye, Luther.” Ricky grinned at the dog before he took his dad’s hand and headed off with the rest of the group down the sidewalk in the opposite direction.
“See ya, kid.” Luther uttered a sharp yip before he fell into line beside Johnny. “Bring cake next time, huh?”
The groups parted ways and the dwarf stared directly ahead down the sidewalk as they passed the museum.
“Are you okay?” Lisa asked although she didn’t look at him.
“Peachy,” he grumbled.
“Do kids make you nervous?”
“When a whole army of ʼem run at my dogs? It makes me itchy, not nervous.”
“Uh-huh.” She shrugged and slid her hand in the pockets of her jacket again. “That was nice, Johnny. I bet it made the kid’s day.”
“Sure.” He glanced at her through his dark sunglasses. “So who threw you a birthday party you never forgot?”
“What?” Lisa uttered a short laugh and shook her head. “That wasn’t about me. Merely an observation.”
“Yeah, you do a fair amount of that.”
Her smile faded. “It’s part of the job, Johnny. Are you trying to tell me I’m being too observant?”
He shrugged. “It had nothin’ to do with the case.”
“It’s called being nice. Paying it forward.”
“Sure. Next time someone asks to pet my dogs, I make the call.”
“Okay. Sorry.”
She stepped aside when Rex darted in front of her to sniff a smear of cheese on the sidewalk. “This place has everything, Johnny.”
“Even kids,” Luther added. “I liked that one.”
Johnny glanced at his smaller hound and sniffed. I bet he did. It sounded like the kid could hear him too. Is that a thing?
Chapter Five
They reached Washington Heights on the Upper West Side
as the sun sank behind the tall buildings. In another hour, it would be too dark to make out most faces in the doorways and darkened alleys but not yet.
“Chuck’s Deli.” Lisa nodded up the cramped street toward the deli that lay a little ahead on their right. “The guy who owns it runs the drug scene here for at least twenty square blocks.”
“Another observation?”
“No, it was in the file.” With her aviators now resting on top of her long dark hair and pulling it away from her face, she looked at the dwarf and raised an eyebrow. “Did you even read the rest of it?”
“No. That’s why you’re with me.”
“Wow. Okay. I’ll put that file in your room when we get to the hotel.”
Johnny grimaced. “You can put it wherever you want.”
They reached the deli and the brightly lit neon Open sign in the front window that was lost among all the other bright lights that spilled through panes and open doorways around them. “The owner’s name is Pete O’Dagle. If we find him, we can at least find where the Boneblade draws its territory lines around here.”
“Yep.” Johnny glanced at Rex, who tugged once on the end of his rope to sniff a pile of black plastic bags out on the sidewalk.
“Lots of food in there, Johnny.”
“Stay sharp, boys. Got it?”
“Like sharp cheese in there?” Luther trotted up the two narrow front steps toward the deli’s front door. “You’re gonna get us sandwiches, aren’t you?”
He ignored the hounds’ constant banter over food as Lisa opened the door. They’ll be on their game when we get down to business. They always are.
A small bell dinged when they stepped inside. The man standing behind the glass case displaying cuts of meats and cheese wiped his hands on a rag and jerked his chin at the apparent new customers. “What do you want?”
“So much roast beef, Johnny.” Rex raised his nose and sniffed the air.
The dwarf stepped aside with his dogs as Lisa approached the counter and he scanned the interior. It appeared to be empty except for the one man who ran the establishment.
“Johnny, do you want anything?” she asked.
“Yeah, Johnny. Get us something.”
