by Martha Carr
“Finally.” Lisa stood and smiled at the men. “Howie?”
The old man squinted at her and looked bewildered. “Who the hell are you?”
“I’m—”
“Now that’s more like it.” Johnny approached the old man and grinned in welcome. “It’s been a while, you wrinkled bastard.”
“What the—” Howie stared at him, then croaked a laugh. “Well, hot damn, Johnny. Look at you. You look exactly the same. Maybe a little rounder at the middle.”
The man slapped his own belly and chuckled.
“And you look…” The bounty hunter snorted. “Shit. You look like someone who knows what he’s doin’. Come on. I have a private jet waitin’ to take us to Baltimore. Have you ever been there?”
“Not yet.” Howie nodded his thanks as Johnny took the handle of his suitcase and wheeled it across the tarmac toward the aircraft.
The hounds trotted wearily after him, too hot to comment on anything.
Lisa stared at the hunched old man and the grinning, chattering bounty hunter. Okay. Now I’ve officially seen the impossible. And Tommy booked a private jet to avoid Johnny making this kind of scene in public. We’re already off to a good start.
“Let’s go, then.”
The crew grumbled and pulled their gear and suitcases together to head toward the aircraft. Phil didn’t so much as look at her.
Thirty minutes into the flight, Johnny and Howie were well into their second glasses of Johnny Walker Black, which had been stocked in the jet’s cabinets specifically for these passengers. They sat beside each other in the wide, plush chairs, clinked glasses, and roared with laughter as they relived the old days of Dwarf the Bounty Hunter.
“Oh, man, Johnny.” The old man wiped tears away from his wrinkled eyes and caught his breath. “You almost had him eating through a tube after that.”
“Naw. The bastard sucked it up. Our guys weren’t too happy with me either, though. I had to buy a whole new set of lenses for…shit. What was his name?”
“Julio?”
“Naw, the other one. With the Mom tattoo.”
Howie laughed. “Jackson.”
“Jackson!” The bounty hunter wagged a finger at his old friend. “He was a good kid, man. A real good kid and could have gone places if it weren’t for that dumbass ink he was so damn proud of.”
“Well, I don’t know about the ink, but that’s what the rest of him did.”
“Did what?”
The aged director raised his almost empty glass and nodded. “The kid went places. Now, he’s out filmin’ for HBO.”
“No shit.”
“Living the dream.”
Johnny chuckled. “Ain’t that the truth. To Jackson…whatever his last name was.”
“Jackson Pullard.”
“Yeah.” They clinked glasses and the dwarf leaned toward the table in front of their chairs. “Shit. You’re empty. Do you want another?”
“I’m seventy-years old, Johnny. Why the hell would I stop now?”
“That’s the ticket.” With a grin, he popped the lid off the whiskey bottle and filled the man’s glass. “Li—” He cleared his throat. “Stephanie! Do you want one?”
Seated in a chair on the other side of the aisle with her chin propped on a fist, Lisa shook her head slowly. “I’m good for now. But you keep doing what you’re doing.”
“We’re reminiscin’, darlin’.”
Howie drank more whiskey and uttered a long sigh. “I think you mean commiserating.”
“It’s the same thing, ain’t it?” Johnny chuckled. “And we’re havin’ us a time.”
The agent grinned. “I can tell.”
“What? What are you lookin’ at me like that for?”
“I merely haven’t seen this full side of you before. It’s…fun.”
“Huh. Well, it ain’t a regular thing so don’t go gettin’ any ideas.”
“Oh, I know.” She turned in her seat to where Cody knelt on the chair in front of her and aimed his camera across the aisle at the dwarf and his old friend. Leaning forward, she whispered, “Have you been on the whole time?”
Without moving the camera resting on the back of the chair, he gave her a slow thumbs-up.
“On what?” Where he lay sprawled in the center of the aisle, Luther whipped his head up and turned to look first at Lisa, then at the camera guy. “Oh. Hey, Johnny.”
The dwarf sniffed and raised his whiskey glass with a crooked smile.
“That’s it,” Rex added and stared at the back of Cody’s head from where he lay on his side toward the front of the plane. “You’re supposed to smile when you’re on camera. I heard that’s a thing, Johnny. Right?”
Johnny almost choked on his drink as he scanned the crewmembers in their seats. Finally, he noticed Cody. “Aw, don’t— Come on, man. Turn that shit off, will ya?”
“What’s that?” Howie looked at the bounty hunter with a glazed smile, saw his scowl, and instantly found the camera centered on them. “Hey, that’s fine.”
“No, it ain’t. Private jet. Private conversation.” He stood and bumped his head against the boom mic dangling above him over the back of his seat. “Goddammit! You folks got some kinda deathwish or what?”
“Sit down.” Howie chuckled and took another sip. “Let ʼem do what they came to do.”
“They ain’t here to document our drinkin’, Howie.”
“Sure. But it’ll go nicely with this new season of yours, won’t it?” The man’s lips parted in a wrinkled grin. “The bounty hunter who seemingly doesn’t age a day and the crooked old man who followed him around the States for seven years merely to get a good shot. It gives the people something to sink their teeth into.”
“They can sink their teeth in my ass. How about that?”
The old director roared with laughter.
Rex snorted and busied himself with a thorough licking of his front paw. “They’re not gonna like it, Johnny. Trust me. It’s not nearly as fun as it sounds.”
A deep, rolling chuckle emerged from the dwarf’s open mouth and grew until it filled the jet. Howie continued to laugh with him, and they clinked their glasses together again before each took a long drink.
Lisa smirked and faced forward in her seat to open the newest book on her tablet.
Cody slid slowly out of his seat and practically floated down the aisle as he moved with the camera, closing in on Johnny and his old Bounty Hunter director. The dwarf stopped laughing when he saw the guy inching toward them. He grabbed a package of fancy in-flight cookies and lobbed it at the camera. “Man, turn that off.”
By the time they landed and picked up their three rental cars waiting for them at Baltimore/Washington International, Johnny was sober enough to convince Lisa he could get behind the wheel. Howie was more than happy to climb in the back with the hounds so Lisa could take the front seat, but the bounty hunter once again denied Phil and his crew any opportunity to join them in the vehicle.
The drive to the Sagamore Pendry Baltimore hotel in Fells Point was uneventful, but the second Johnny and his hounds stepped out of the rental and handed the keys to the valet, things became unexpectedly weird.
“Oh, my God. No way.” A woman wearing a long jacket with a leather portfolio tucked under her arm stopped to stare at the dwarf and ignored the filming crew completely. “You’re Dwarf the Bounty Hunter.”
He grunted and hauled his duffel bag over his shoulder.
“Hey, look there!” A guy down the sidewalk held his baggy pants up with one hand and pointed at Johnny with the other. “That’s the guy. Dude, what’d I tell ya, huh? This is for real.”
The bounty hunter rolled his eyes and strode through the front doors of the hotel with the hounds trotting beside him. Howie kept up fairly well despite his cane, and one of the other crew members had taken his suitcase with all their luggage.
Lisa swerved around Cody—who stalked after Johnny with his ever-rolling camera—to join the dwarf and his old friend. “Exactly
like any other regular day, Johnny.”
“No, it ain’t.” He shied away from a group of giggling, staring women in their mid-twenties who pointed at him and whispered about the show and the dwarf and the fact that this was real. “How the hell do all these folks already know what’s goin’ on?”
“We posted the first video to YouTube before the jet took off,” Phil interjected when he joined them at the check-in counter.
“Say what?”
The man shrugged and raised a petulant eyebrow. “Well, you did give us an extra forty minutes to get a head start.”
“Dammit.” Johnny turned slowly to study the avid fans and spectators over his shoulder. “This ain’t gonna work.”
“This was the plan,” Lisa reminded him.
“Not this part. These folks follow us to our rooms, we ain’t gonna sleep the whole time we’re here.”
“Camera!” Howie shouted and thumped the end of his cane lightly against Cody’s leg. “Take a wide shot from across the lobby, yeah? Get the whole thing—hounds, Johnny, fans, and the mic too. Better yet, turn the damn thing off.”
Dave glanced at his mic, then stared at him in confusion. “But then we don’t have any audio.”
“Put it in a montage, okay?” He waved them both off. “And the rest of the team stays out of the shot. Unless one of you new up-and-comers have some bounty-hunter experience in you too.”
The crew backed away from Johnny and Lisa and hefted their gear as they muttered to each other.
The old man turned toward Phil and raised an eyebrow. “Do you have a better idea?”
The displaced director glanced at Johnny, then exhaled a disgruntled sigh and hurried after his team.
“There.” Howie slapped a hand on Johnny’s shoulder. “Taken care of.”
“It’s a damn good thing I got you on this trip, brother.”
“Ha. Well, I was practically kidnapped, but that’s water under the bridge. It’s time to check in.”
Chapter Seven
Johnny and Lisa’s rooms had been booked across the hall from each other, although with such late notice on Howie joining them right before the flight, the ex-director’s room was on the third floor with the film crew instead of the fourth with his friend. “Don’t you worry about me, Johnny. Something tells me I’ll know exactly when you head out and need an extra pair of eyes.”
The old man winked and hobbled through his door. The film crew disbursed to their reserved rooms down the hall, and Johnny, Lisa, and the hounds took the elevator to the fourth floor.
After they each settled into their rooms, Lisa took her usual next step and knocked on the dwarf’s door with a perfunctory, “It’s me.”
Johnny let her in with a nod and a grunt before he trudged down the short hall.
“Oh, wow.” She stepped slowly through the room and removed her Stephanie illusion as she viewed the large, fully equipped kitchen on the left. Suitably impressed, she turned the corner on the right toward the large living area in his suite. “It looks like someone had an upgrade.”
He shrugged. “I’m sure yours is equally as nice.”
“Nice? Sure, but about a third the size of this.” She flopped on the luxuriously soft cushions of the couch facing the north-facing windows and sighed as she placed her tablet beside her. “He went all out.”
“I don’t see why.” The dwarf filled a large mixing bowl with water from the sink and set it on the kitchen floor for the hounds. “I ain’t exactly the type to need a big ol’ fancy suite like this one. And before you ask, no. I didn’t ask for an upgrade, either.”
“I was talking about Tommy,” Lisa replied with a smirk. “Not the concierge.”
“Oh.” He scrunched his nose. “Then it makes even less sense.”
“How’s that?”
“Private film crew, private jet, bigass suite with only me and two hounds to fill it. Looks to me like Nelson’s tryin’ to compensate for somethin’.” As the sound of Rex and Luther lapping water rose from the kitchen, Johnny joined her in the living area and took the large armchair with its back to the north windows. “Like he all of a sudden thinks he needs to start impressin’ me. Which he ain’t.”
“Um…well, I think all this is for the fans.”
“Say what now?”
She smirked at him. “All this with the show, Johnny. It’ll only work if everything looks and sounds and feels legit, right? That includes what your old fans think of Dwarf the Bounty Hunter’s unexpected return.”
He blinked and pressed his lips together. “Did you watch any of it?”
“Not yet.”
“I think Nelson ain’t watched a goddamn minute of it either ’cause I didn’t put myself up like this back then.”
“No private jet?”
Johnny snorted. “Hell no. We had a tour van.”
Lisa tried to fight back a laugh and failed. “Are you serious?”
“Yep.” Shifting in the chair, he looked away from her and mumbled, “It had my face on it and everythin’.”
“So you drove your own bus for your own show to apprehend bounties for seven years?”
The corner of his mouth twitched in the hint of a smile, and his mustache wiggled with it. “Only for the first year—long enough for me to get a good read on the guy who ended up drivin’ for us after that. I tell you what, darlin’. Roger handled that bus like it was a damn racecar.”
The agent folded her arms with a curious frown. “You hired a racecar driver to drive your tour bus.”
“What? No. He was a gnome.”
“Johnny!” Luther trotted toward the slightly open door into the king-sized bedroom suite and nudged it open the rest of the way with his nose. The door creaked gently. “Got any treats in here?”
“Luther, we were in the kitchen,” Rex called after him as he lapped the rest of the water. “Unless there’s a fridge in there, you’re barking up the wrong—”
Luther barked sharply, spun, and bumped his head against the door before he finally made his way out again. “The fridge! Johnny, people in Baltimore love you, right?”
“And hounds.”
“Yeah, of course. So they’d put treats in that fridge, right?”
“Johnny, can you check?”
Luther raced past his brother and skidded to a stop in front of the fridge to drag his tongue across the black appliance in a long line. “Ooh, yeah. I can smell it, Johnny. They put bacon in there.”
Rex nipped at the smaller hound’s neck, then licked his brother’s face. “Nope. That’s still you.”
“Leave it, boys,” the dwarf grumbled.
Lisa turned on the couch to peer into the kitchen on the other side of the suite’s entrance hall. “What are they up to?”
“Same thing every time.” The dwarf dragged a hand down his cheek and snorted. “It’s endless.”
“Wouldn’t be endless if you gave us treats, Johnny.”
“Yeah, we don’t talk with our mouths full. That’s rude.”
He shook his head and slumped in the armchair.
“What?” Lisa grinned at him.
“I have too much on my mind.” He cast a frustrated glance toward the kitchen. “Too many voices, rather.”
“Don’t tell me you’re starting to regret your greatest invention.”
The dwarf scoffed, crossed one leg over the other, and lifted his arms almost to shoulder height to prop them on the armrests. “Collars ain’t my best, darlin’.”
“What?” Rex called.
Luther snorted. “Now you’re being rude.”
“Oh, really?” Lisa raised an eyebrow. “As far as I know, there aren’t any other talking-dog collars out there. You could make a fortune on a patent with that.”
“And throw the world of hound and master off balance with no return?” He shook his head. “I’m all for makin’ an impact, darlin’, but that’s one dangerous road. And patents are a waste of time.”
“Well, it can’t be—”
A brisk kn
ock at the front door interrupted her. “Mr. Walker?”
Johnny frowned at the entrance hall. “If that’s room service before I even called, then I’ll be impressed.”
Lisa pulled up her Stephanie illusion as he stood and followed him out of the living area.
The bounty hunter reached the door and pulled it open. “If you’re gonna be shoutin’ my name from the other side of the door, I’m only gonna say this once. It’s—aw, hell.”
“Hello.” Phil grinned in the hallway, surrounded by four of his team. Cody stood slightly behind him and to the side, his camera rolling. Dave dangled the mic over the director’s head and tried to stretch it over Johnny’s too. “Can we come in?”
“No.”
“Johnny, this is all part of the process.” Phil peered around the dwarf and saw Lisa-Stephanie in the hall, a hound on either side of her. “And since it looks like we’re all here, we might as well pick up where we left off.” He tapped Cody’s shoulder lightly and muttered, “Get her and the dogs in there too. That’s great.”
Cody stepped forward with the camera, and Johnny pointed at him. “Come any closer, and that camera’s mine.”
“Only a few minutes, Johnny,” the director pleaded. “Let us inside and we’ll make it quick. The lighting in here is—”
“Y’all ain’t steppin’ inside my room. Get your shots in public like everyone else.” He started to close the door but the director thumped his hand against it and managed to keep it open briefly.
“For the show, Johnny. For the fans.”
“Boys.”
“Yeah, Johnny?”
“We’re on it.”
The hounds stalked past Lisa and moved slowly toward the open door as they growled and bared their teeth.
Phil chuckled nervously. “How are we supposed to get more material if you won’t let us in—”
“When I leave the room. And that ain’t happenin’ again tonight.”
“Want us to chase ʼem off, Johnny?”
